


Three Steps Forward, One Step Sideways

by akajb



Series: Illusion Of Control [3]
Category: Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Clawen, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25479754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akajb/pseuds/akajb
Summary: Blue has been reunited with Echo and Charlie. Owen's recovering and back working on Sorna. Claire is wooing investors. And life is returning to normal. Of course, when you work with dinosaurs, adventure is never far away.A sequel to Picking up the Pieces. This story starts about 3-4 months after PUP ends. While reading PUP (and IC) would add more context, they are not strictly necessary.Complete
Relationships: Claire Dearing & Owen Grady, Claire Dearing/Owen Grady
Series: Illusion Of Control [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1563547
Comments: 82
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a sequel to Picking up the Pieces (which was a sequel to Illusion of Control). You can probably read it without having read those, but there will be some call back to previous activity that may be a bit tougher to follow.
> 
> If you want to read this without reading those, here's what you should know: The Indoraptors and Indominus were dealt with in the IC (and are all dead). PUP covered Eli Mills and Henry working on creating their own dinosaurs out at the Lockwood Estate. This story takes place about 3-4 months post PUP. Owen is still working on Sorna and Claire on Nublar. Henry and Eli are both in jail / awaiting trials.

**Chapter 1**

"Hold," Owen called down to the raptors, one hand raised in a fist while his other was clutching the clicker. He watched as the three raptors stayed in place, their gazes holding steady on him, even as they twitched slightly. He counted to three, before lowering his arm. "And, go." Pressing the clicker, he watched the three raptors hurry off, disappearing into the jungle cover of their paddock.

Owen unhooked the now-empty treat bucket from the railing and started walking back along the catwalk. He could see Stephen Parker waiting for him, but the man had remained quiet throughout Owen's entire demonstration, which was a far change from how Hoskins used to act. Owen wasn't quite sure what he thought about it. He didn't miss Hoskins — far from it — but he was still adjusting to this new normal, and still found himself expecting to see Hoskins waltzing through his office door, or swaggering across the field towards him.

Claire had told him, repeatedly, that Hoskins would _never_ be setting foot back on Nublar or Sorna. And he believed her. Yet, it still seemed almost too easy, how they'd finally managed to get rid of him. Although, he knew that _that_ thought was stupid. Owen still firmly believed that Hoskins should've been dismissed back when the Indoraptors had been running around.

However, even ignoring that, there had been nothing easy about Owen's recovery after the escapades at the Lockwood Estate. And now, just over three months later, he continued to deal with stiffness and a decreased range of motion in his shoulder. But, he was diligently doing the exercises his physio had prescribed (Claire never let him forget about them, and she'd somehow managed to rope both Barry _and_ Zia into being her Sorna spies if he skipped out). He knew the exercises were helping. His physical therapist was optimistic that he'd regain his full range of motion in a few more months.

As Owen reached the end of the bridge, Parker fell into step beside him as they headed for the stairs.

"They're looking really good," Parker commented, and Owen just nodded. "Any more issues between Blue and Echo?"

The first couple of months after Blue had returned to Sorna, she and Echo had continued to get into occasional skirmishes. Echo had become used to being the "alpha" in Blue's absence and she wasn't all that excited about giving up the role. Blue, however, was not about to relinquish it without a fight. While there had been the odd occasion where Owen and Barry had been concerned the raptors were going to end up seriously injuring each other, for the most part, the fights had been small, and the animals had been easily distracted.

"Not for a few weeks now," Owen told Parker. "They seem to finally be settling back down. I think it helps that we play around with the order during some of the drills. It gives Echo — and even Charlie — a chance to somewhat lead. It's not the same as being the beta, but…" Owen shrugged.

He and Barry had debated for a long time on how to deal with Echo and Blue's fighting. It had always been clear to them that Blue would win, but they were concerned about Echo getting hurt, or the pack fracturing and Echo becoming an outcast. Thankfully, time, and some drill changes, seemed to be working well enough as a solution. That, and Owen sort of thought that after everything the raptors had been through, that none of them really wanted to lose a pack member again.

"That's good to hear," Parker nodded, as they stepped back down onto the ground. "What about the others?"

Before answering, Owen spotted a paddock tech and waved him over. He handed off the empty bucket he'd been carrying, before turning back to Parker.

The "others" was the generic name that often was used to refer to the two baby raptors whose eggs had been rescued from the Lockwood Estate, as Blue, Charlie and Echo still got referred to as _his girls_ or _the pack_. The name bugged Owen a bit, but he tried not to get defensive, usually just making a point to call the two raptors by their names, instead. He didn't see how it was any more work to do that versus call them "the others. "

"Olive and Grape are doing well," Owen said, before glancing quickly at his watch. "It's a bit early for their afternoon training session, but we could still go and say hi."

He started across the field with Parker towards the nursery. Olive and Grape were almost three months old now, and so they continued to spend most of their time indoors. It would probably be another month before they moved them to an outdoor paddock. That was not to say that the raptors hadn't been outside yet, Owen had taken them out for various drills. They had a small area set up that he could put them in, but it wasn't secure enough for them to stay out there all night. And they were still young, still learning to regulate their body temperatures. It was easier, and safer, to keep them indoors for now.

When Owen had first arrived back on Sorna after spending the couple of weeks recuperating on Nublar, he still hadn't decided if he was going to take on the new raptors. To be fair, Claire had only dropped the news on him the night before he'd returned. But, on his second day back (his first had been spent out with his girls), he'd found himself walking into the lab building and approaching the three eggs. He'd felt a bit silly over it all, considering there was nothing that he could do except look at them. But, seeing them in front of him had made it all that much more real.

Owen had spent much of the next few days talking with Barry, Zia, Parker and Claire about the whole thing, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. Parker had been the one to tell him that they — Jurassic World and InGen — were thinking, _hoping_ , to be able to have the raptors eventually end up as an attraction on Nublar. Owen had been pretty stunned when he'd heard that, and he still hadn't gotten over it by the time he'd talked with Claire later that day. A conversation that still made him wince when he recalled it now. He hadn't been all that… civil, and had had to profusely apologize to Claire the following day for some of his comments.

He had been — and still was, really — surprised that _anyone_ was considering having _any_ raptors become an attraction, especially since Jurassic World had been extremely against the idea for years. But, then he'd learned more about the raptors. And what he'd learned was what had actually made him agree to take on training them, even if it was information that still made his blood boil to this day. The raptors were more than _just_ like Blue. They had been created using some of Blue's DNA. They weren't clones, but they weren't exactly offspring, either. More a hybrid mix of the regular raptor DNA that Eli and Wu had stolen from the park, combined with some of Blue's, along with a few other tweaks that Wu had thrown in (but that Owen still didn't quite understand the significance of).

The discovery of Blue's DNA had come from the extensive notes that Dr. Wu had left behind; notes that it had taken a while for the Jurassic World legal team to get access to. Because of the mixture that had been used, no one was quite sure what the results would be. If Olive and Grape were going to end up with similar traits to Blue, such as being more empathetic, or if the use of Blue's DNA would end up being unnoticeable. Owen knew that everyone was hoping that they'd have Blue's empathy, as it would mean they'd more likely be a successful attraction.

While he still wasn't all that excited about the idea of Olive and Grape ending up as an attraction period — and, most of the time, he tried his best to not even think about it — he did like knowing that with that option on the table it meant that no one was currently thinking about or pushing the same idea for his girls. In a way, it felt sort of like he was sacrificing Olive and Grape, for Blue, Echo and Charlie.

So far, the baby raptors had just seemed just like regular baby raptors to him. Then again, Blue's empathy hadn't really been distinguishable until she was closer to six months, so there was still time for that to show up. Owen was also finding it a bit more difficult to work with just two of them. Two didn't feel like a pack, and the dynamic between them was different than it had been for his girls when they were that little, or even Sky, Pepper, Fern and Snow. Owen kept telling himself that that was good — that it would be better, easier, if he was able to keep all the raptors separate, and see them all as their own beings.

"How are Olive and Grape doing?" Parker asked, interrupting Owen's musings. "I mean, I've seen the reports, but I'll admit that I mostly just skim them over. The details don't mean a whole lot to me." Parker laughed as he said that, and Owen forced out a chuckle, while mentally rolling his eyes. _This_ was one of the big reasons he hated all the paperwork he did. It never felt like those who demanded it actually ever took the time to read or understand it.

"They're doing well," Owen said. "Thriving, which is good. They're still really little, and so most of the activities we do with them are focused around helping them develop their gross motor skills. Things like climbing, going up and down little ramps, and walking over uneven ground. It all sounds pretty basic, I know, but it's important for their development. The better their coordination, the more we'll be able to work with them going forward."

As they approached the nursery, Owen held open the door and then followed Parker inside. At the moment, there were only two sets of baby animals in the nursery, the compys and the raptors. Both were sets that had been rescued from the Lockwood Estate. Owen led Parker down the short hallway, past the door where he could hear the compys squawking from behind to another door at the end of the hall that led to the raptor pen.

Opening it, he and Parker entered a small area that was separated from the raptors by a chain link fence that had a door in the middle. Olive and Grape started chittering the moment they saw them, the two raptors approaching the fence, clutching at it with their claws. After Owen made sure that the door to the room was shut firmly behind him, he moved towards the raptors, crouching down across from them, the fence separating them.

"Hey girls," he greeted them. "How are you doing today? Both of you behaving?" He reached out and gently tapped them both on their snouts, which were pressed up against the fence. Grape tried to lunge for his finger, but Owen was faster, pulling his hand back.

"Which one is which?" Parker asked, reminding Owen that he wasn't alone.

He stood back up, looking down at the two raptors who abandoned the fence to go attack one of the many rubber balls that were spread throughout their cage when they realized they'd lost his attention. The balls that were currently almost as big as the raptors. In fact, only a month ago the balls _had_ been bigger. Another reminder that they were growing up fast.

"The grey-ish one with the purple-ish stripe is Grape," Owen told Parker, pointing as he spoke. "And the green one is Olive." He wasn't really sure _why_ Parker had even asked the question, considering their names plus colourings should've been indication enough. But, since he still wasn't quite sure why Parker had even come out to Sorna, he didn't press.

"That makes sense," Parker replied. "Are you enjoying working with them?"

"I am," Owen admitted, hesitating only briefly.

It was the truth, though. Even though he still felt uneasy over some aspects of it all, it was hard to remain upset with how playful the two raptors were. And it was nice to work with ones who still seemed excited to see him, and happy to attempt whatever drills he had in store for them, even if they didn't always seem to grasp what he was asking them to do. He loved his girls, but they could be moody and difficult to work with when they chose to be (which was still more often than he liked), so the change of pace could feel refreshing.

"You must be pretty busy now, with both sets of raptors," Parker continued, and Owen looked over at him, confusion furrowing his brow. Well, yeah, of course Owen was busy, but, that shouldn't be a surprise.

"It's a lot to juggle," he acknowledged, carefully. "But, Barry and I've got a system worked out. And since we're not training these two the same way as we did the others, that's helped."

That was actually another part of what had convinced him to finally agree. Yes, he was interested in what (if any) traits from Blue the raptors would show, but he'd also been adamant that he wasn't going to go back on his promise to figure out a way to get back to Nublar more regularly (even if he had agreed to never use the word promise around Claire). Knowing that the raptors were going to (likely) end up as an attraction, had meant that they didn't need the same stringent training schedule that Blue and the others had gone through. They could be more relaxed with these two, focusing more on play and helping them develop strong social skills and a good relationship with humans, and focus less on developing their problem solving abilities.

And _that_ meant that he and Barry had been able to sort out a schedule. In the end, they had decided to go with a 10 days on, 4 days off plan. Although it was more like two full days off, and two half days, as whoever was leaving would usually end up doing some work the morning before they caught the boat back to Nublar, and then in the afternoon on the day they returned. They had also staggered their schedules so that they always had a few full days together before the other left.

"You've been able to spend more time back on Nublar recently, as I understand it," Parker commented, continuing to stare through the fence at Olive and Grape.

Owen looked at Parker in surprise at the words. The arrangement that he and Barry had come up with had had to be approved by Parker. The fact that Owen was spending that time on Nublar shouldn't be a surprise.

"Do you enjoy that?" Parker asked, finally turning to look at Owen.

"Uh, yes?" Owen winced when his answer came out hesitantly, quickly following up. "It's been nice to get back there more regularly." He managed to cut himself off before he made a comment about Claire. He knew that Claire would _not_ want him to be mentioning their relationship (even if it was more than common knowledge amongst all the staff).

"Hm," Parker nodded. "Would you be interested in spending more time back on Nublar?"

The question made Owen pause. He felt like he could suddenly see warning lights flashing all over the place. He wished he knew where this conversation was going, because he felt like whatever he said next may land him somewhere he didn't want to be.

Thankfully, Parker didn't seem to actually care about getting an answer, as he continued to talk.

"With Hoskins gone, we've been trying to figure out a replacement for him. But, even more so, we've been re-thinking his position. Not only have we lost him, but the actual activity on Sorna has been picking up. You've got the two sets of raptors now. The lab has more eggs incubating. There's been talk about working on new species development again, not just more of the same…" Parker trailed off.

Owen wasn't really sure what he was supposed to say in response. He'd had two sets of raptors before, so he didn't think that that was all that new. And Claire had already mentioned the new species development to him, so he'd known about it, even if it hadn't actually been given a greenlight yet. As for Hoskins's position, well, Owen didn't really know everything that Hoskins had done, but he wasn't all that interested in taking on that job, from the bits he did know. Owen preferred to work directly with the raptors, not just observing from afar.

"I… I'm not really sure what you're asking here," he said, watching Parker closely.

"We've been thinking about creating a new position," Parker stated. "Someone who would take on overseeing everything happening here on Sorna. Both the lab side and the research side. Right now, the information we get out of here, and the supervision that happens, is often disjointed. What you and Barry work on is completely separate from what the lab guys are working on."

Owen nodded, although he didn't really see anything wrong with that. There really wasn't any connection between the two.

"The work you've done with the raptors, the work that any of our trainers do with the animals, is incredibly beneficial. And as the lab continues to produce more, both of the species we already have, but also new species, we want to bring in behaviourists earlier. Not to the level of what you two are doing with the raptors, but to bridge the gap of understanding. To make it more circular, so that there isn't the same disconnect with the lab once the animals hatch. That they have and use more of this knowledge as they continue their work."

Okay, well that Owen could actually sort of get behind. He did always find it frustrating that Wu never seemed to care about the dinosaurs once they'd hatched. To Owen, he had always felt that yes, creating viable embryos was important, but that the final result, the living, breathing animal, mattered just as much, if not more. Because just because you could bring something to life, didn't mean it _should_ be brought to life. And the Indominus and the Indoraptors were perfect examples of that.

"Anyway, the position hasn't been completely sorted out yet," Parker said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Owen hadn't actually said anything in a while. "We're still figuring out exactly how it would work. But while it would be based here on Sorna, it would require frequent travel to Nublar, as there's coordination that needs to occur between here and the lab there. I wanted to bring it up, though, because your name has come up a few times now in discussion. There's been more than one person who thinks you'd be perfect for this role, what with the work you've done with the raptors, and the connections you have back on Nublar."

Owen had to hide his scoff with a cough. Of _course_ his "connection" to Claire would be considered an asset here. Even if, to Owen, it felt like it would probably actually be more a liability. Like the two of them needed more things to potentially argue over.

"It's not a done deal. But I wanted you to start thinking it over," Parker said. Owen felt like a deer in the headlights, not sure how to answer, but thankfully Parker continued. "You don't have to answer today, of course. And it's not just up to me, either. But, I hope you'll think about it. I think you'd be good at it."

o-o-o

Ever since her adventure at the Lockwood Estate a few months back, Claire had felt like she was under constant scrutiny on Nublar. While she was used to feeling like she was under a microscope, everyone waiting for her to screw up at work, the recent scrutiny had felt different. It was like everyone was expecting her to fall apart at any moment, like she'd suddenly become a damsel in distress that everyone needed to save. For the first time in her life, Claire was kind of wishing people would go back to talking about whether she was competent in her job or who she must have slept with to get where she was.

And if it wasn't bad enough that it felt like all her employees were walking on eggshells around her, Simon had also taken to showing up on Nublar more frequently than he ever had before. Every time she thought she was getting a handle on convincing her employees that she really was _fine_ (seriously, did no one understand that _she_ wasn't the one who got injured at the Estate?) and that all she needed was for them to just _do their jobs_ , Simon would show up again. And everyone seemed to be taking the same cue from his more frequent appearances that, sadly, Claire found she'd been taking, too — that _Simon_ didn't trust that she was alright, and that he felt that he needed to be more involved, more hands-on.

The whole thing was enough to make her want to scream whenever she saw Simon's name show up on her calendar. But, being the good employee that she was, Claire continued to smile and power through, while cursing up a storm in her head, and then later in the evenings to Owen, who had, unfortunately, become the only outlet she had for these frustrations. She did give him props for just letting her vent until she was exhausted, agreeing and nodding and humming along as appropriate, never making her feel stupid or like she was overreacting to it all.

This morning, she'd been actually looking forward to her work day. It was supposed to be a pretty low-key one. She'd do her regular checks-in down in Control, and then she had a few paddock visits to make. Claire had been looking forward to getting an update on the compys in particular. The previous month they had finally moved the ones that had hatched on Sorna the previous summer — the few who had managed to escape being kidnapped — over to Nublar. And so far, they seemed to be immune to whatever virus had all but wiped out the previous batch.

Then, when she'd sat down at her desk that morning and had pulled up her calendar she'd found a new meeting had been added. With Simon. _Fuck._

There had been no other details besides his name, not that that surprised Claire, but it had meant that once again she'd spent a good part of her day trying to prepare for a meeting she had no idea how to prepare for.

As Simon's assistant let her into his office, Claire steeled herself to be ready for anything. For all she knew, Simon was actually here to propose another one of his crazy ideas. She almost hoped he was.

"Claire, I'm so glad you were able to fit me into your schedule," Simon greeted her, standing up from behind his desk. He waved her towards the side of his office where there was a small sofa and a couple of armchairs gathered around a glass coffee table.

After sitting down, Claire set the laptop she'd brought with her onto the coffee table, now more confused than ever about what Simon wanted to talk about. Normally they sat at the small table, so they could go over paperwork together.

"I wasn't expecting you on the island today," she told him.

"Yes, well, I had some business over in San Jose these past few days and figured I'd stop over for a quick visit before I headed back home," Simon replied. "I always enjoy checking in on my island."

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to get updates on?" Claire asked, reaching to open her laptop.

"No, I just wanted a chance to catch up. I feel like we haven't had much time to talk recently."

Claire wasn't really sure what to say to that, considering she felt the exact opposite. Was she missing something? Had something happened that she should've known about?

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," Simon continued. "It's been a few months since, well, since the whole kidnapping thing. I know that Mr. Grady, Owen, is back over on Sorna now, but I've heard that he's been making regular trips back here. Is his shoulder better now?"

Claire had to bite back the groan that wanted to escape. Really, she was going to have to have a conversation about Lockwood, _again_? She was pretty sure that if she was male that Simon would've moved off this topic by now. Besides, it wasn't like she'd been held for all that long. _One_ night. And she hadn't suffered any injuries. Sure, she'd had a bump on her head and headaches for a couple of days, but that was _nothing_ compared to what Owen had gone through. And she'd been so distracted with everything else going on at the time, she'd barely had anytime to even acknowledge the headaches.

"His shoulder's healing," she said with a forced smile. "He's still going to physio for it and he has appointments with them every couple of weeks. They seem to think he'll have a full recovery. It's just about strengthening the muscles now so that he can regain his full range of motion."

"Good, good," Simon nodded. "And you? No lasting effects?"

"Nope, I'm good."

"Did I hear correctly that you're finally going to be using up some of your vacation time?"

"Yes," Claire nodded. "Owen and I are taking a few days."

"Only a few?"

She barely managed to prevent her eye roll at that. "With Grape and Olive, the young raptors, Owen can't be gone for too long."

"Oh, right. How are the raptors doing? Still looking promising for an attraction?"

"They're looking really good," she said, finally relaxing more into her seat. Now _this_ was a topic she was comfortable talking about. "It's still early days, but I think it'll be doable. They haven't had many visitors yet, since they're still little and Zia — Dr. Rodriguez — has been worried about infection, but they'll be moving to their outdoor paddock in another couple of months. Once that happens, Owen and Barry plan to increase the number of people stopping by. They want to build up the raptors' tolerance to outsiders. That'll be the first test. It won't work if they're too easily spooked by visitors."

Simon nodded. "And the other raptors? How are they?"

"They're doing well. It took some adjusting for the three of them to get used to each other again, but they seem to be getting back to their old normal now. Owen's said he thinks they're about ready to start doing some new drills."

"Excellent. It will be good to get that project going again," Simon said. "To see what else we can learn. It's time we start kicking everything back into full gear."

Claire wasn't really sure what he meant by that. But before she could ask, Simon continued on.

"Dr. Barnes has been asking me about new species development. As you know, we've got more Apatosaurus eggs incubating, and I think I saw a request the other day for a couple more Gallimimus. But, those are just filling in gaps. While I'm hopeful we'll be able to present the raptors as a new attraction, I think it's also time we started thinking of what will come after."

"The Edmontosaurus," Claire said, nodding along. "Yes, I've been involved in a couple of discussions around that. While normally I would be hesitant about suggesting a herbivore in order to try to get an attendance spike, I actually think we're in such a different situation now, that it may work to our advantage. Some of our drop off has been because people got scared. But they're more likely to fear a carnivore getting loose than a herbivore. I think there are many who would be reassured by the introduction of a less threatening species. The Edmontosaurus is a good one, too. Because while it is a herbivore, it's huge — I've read estimates of up to 40 feet long. So they would be very impressive specimens."

"Indeed," Simon agreed. "For the raptors, we're looking at possibly presenting them once they're about a year old, correct? So next February or March?"

"Yes, we want them to get old enough that we have a better grasp of their personalities, and of course to see if there are any genetic issues. Although, Owen thinks he'll have a good idea of whether this whole idea is even workable in another 3-4 months, at which point they'll be just over six months old. So we'll have some heads up if things start to look like they won't work out."

"And the timeline for the Edmontosaurus would be what?"

As they'd been speaking, Claire had been pulling up her notes on her laptop, and she checked them quickly before answering. "For those, we're probably looking at about five months before we have the first viable eggs hatching. Based on our prior experience, it's most likely that the first couple of batches won't produce any that could be used for an attraction. We're probably looking at an opening date a year or more after the raptors."

"Hm, that long," Simon said, tapping a finger against his chin thoughtfully. "Seems a bit late for capitalizing on the current trends and feelings."

Claire had to hide her grin, knowing it would be misinterpreted. But _this_ , this reaction, was something she'd expected, and it was the perfect lead in for a new idea that she'd been brainstorming on over the past few weeks. While she hadn't been quite ready to give Simon her pitch on it, she knew she'd never find better timing.

"Right, I agree the timeline seems too long. However, with our new plans for development, what with having them out on Sorna and using behaviourists much earlier in the process, I think that actually raises some interesting areas to explore. One thing we've never done, is we've never really brought guests into the whole process before," Claire said. "I've been thinking that we could work with the new research institute to develop a whole program around the development of the species. Let people be, in a way, part of the process. Have them understand the work that goes into the development from the very beginning. Let them see the advances we make, and the setbacks. Give them glimpses of these dinosaurs during this time, even if they can't visit them, themselves. We could work with educators and design curriculum units around it, aimed at various grade levels. Build up the excitement, so that when they finally go on display, people will be eager to come to see the end result of something they'd been a part of."

For a moment, Simon just stared at her taking all the information in. Claire could nearly hear the wheels in his head turning.

"I like it!" he stated at last, a grin growing across his face. "This would tie in a few different areas. And it's a great way to reach our audience back at home. To bring in those who can't come here in person."

"Exactly," Claire said with a smile. That had been part of her goal. To try to figure out a way to expand the reach of Jurassic World to those who couldn't, for whatever reason, make it out there in person. "I've started putting together a plan for it, but it's still early stages. It's a recent idea I had."

Simon rubbed his chin. "Hmm, how long do you think you need to pull it together? The people I was meeting with in San Jose are some new interested investors. I think this might be just the kind of thing they'd be interested in. You could give them a tour, present the idea, maybe take them over to Sorna."

"Um–"

"I'm thinking maybe in early June? Do you think you could be ready by then?"

Claire gritted her teeth, that was barely over two weeks away. If she was going to manage that… well, it meant she was going to have to tell Owen that she wouldn't be able to take the couple of days off when he was over next. She was going to need every spare moment she could find. But, as she'd always said to her sister, sometimes work really did need to come first.

"Sure, I can be ready."

o-o-o

"So, Parker was out for a visit today," Owen interrupted, cutting Claire off mid-sentence.

There was a long pause and Owen held his breath, suddenly wondering if she'd been saying something important. He'd been struggling to focus on what she'd been saying ever since he'd answered the phone. Really, he'd been struggling with focus ever since Parker had sprung the news on him earlier that day. He'd spent the rest of the day in a haze, thankful that everything he'd had to do was mostly routine. And while he'd been in his office when she'd first called, he'd found himself unable to sit still, and so he was now walking along the catwalk of the raptor paddock.

" _He's been out there a lot, hasn't he?_ " Claire asked slowly. " _Was this visit different?_ "

"They're looking for someone to replace Hoskins," Owen replied honestly, his gaze searching the ground below, looking for his girls. He was a little surprised they hadn't come out to show themselves yet.

" _Well, that makes sense,_ " she said, after a moment. " _I'm actually surprised they haven't hired someone yet. It's been a few months, and I know Parker was pretty busy before. All this extra work has got to be taking its toll._ "

"Right," Owen agreed. "I guess I just hadn't really thought about it. And I guess I was kind of hoping they'd never fill it. It's been much nicer working here without Hoskins."

" _Probably whoever they hire will be better,_ " Claire said, and he knew she was trying to reassure him. " _I mean, the bar's so low, it would be tough for them to do worse_." She laughed as she said that, but Owen couldn't even manage to force out a single 'ha' in response. When he didn't say anything, Claire continued. " _Have they already found someone? Do you know them?_ "

"No. No, no, no," he quickly replied. "Actually, Parker said they're looking at changing the job. That instead of just having someone take over managing IBRIS, and any other raptor research, that they want to expand the role. They're thinking about creating a new position; of hiring someone to be in charge of all of Sorna. He mentioned the new species development you were telling me about. That this person would oversee that, and the raptors, and any and all stuff that ends up happening out here."

" _Oh,_ " Claire said.

"You hadn't heard about this?" Owen asked after a long pause, when Claire didn't say anything else. It wasn't until he had started explaining the position, that he realized he'd sort of assumed that she'd have already heard. Although, now that he thought about it, if she _had_ , she would probably have heard that Parker was going to offer it to him, and he couldn't imagine her keeping that from him.

" _No, I don't think so,_ " she said after a brief consideration. " _I mean, maybe it was mentioned in an email, but I don't remember any meetings about it. Why? What's going on, Owen?_ "

"Parker said that a few people have brought up my name," he admitted, slowing to a stop and leaning on the railing as he stared down into the paddock below. "He wants me to consider it."

" _Really? Wow, that's great,_ " she said immediately. " _Do you want to do it? Would you still be able to look after the raptors? Or would you need to find new trainers? I assume the position would still be based on Sorna, right?_ "

"Yeah, still based here, although he implied that it would require more time back on Nublar. But–"

" _Really? You'd be back here more?_ "

Owen frowned, suddenly glad that they were having this conversation over the phone and not face-to-face. He probably should've expected that Claire would be all for it. Not because of the potential for increased time on Nublar, although he knew that she'd like that, but because Claire had never seen a rung on the corporate ladder that she hadn't wanted to climb.

"It's not a done deal," he finally said. "And I'm not even sure I want to take it. But even if I did, Parker said it wasn't just up to him."

" _Oh._ " Even though Claire's response was clipped, he knew that she wasn't mad, that she was just trying to figure things out. To not say the wrong thing. While things were so much better between them these days, he knew that there were still moments when they both felt like they were walking on eggshells, being almost _too_ careful with their words, afraid of taking a wrong step.

"The job description is still being sorted out. But… I was never meant to be a suit," Owen said. Some branches rustled below him, and he peered down, trying to see if he could spot the raptors. "And I don't think I'd like it. I can barely handle the paperwork I have to do now."

" _You'd probably be really good at it though,_ " she said. " _But, I'm not trying to say that you should take it. Just… don't dismiss it out of hand, okay? See what else Parker has to say before you make up your mind._ "

"And if I don't decide to take it?"

Owen held his breath as he waited for her response, suddenly afraid of what she would say.

" _Then you don't take it._ " Her tone was matter-of-fact. He heard her take a sharp breath, before letting it out, and when she continued, her voice sounded concerned. " _Owen, I'm not with you because of your job. You get that, right? And I'm not about to break up with you because you decide to take or not take a different job._ "

"Yeah, I know," he said, his breath whooshing out of him at her words. He pushed away from the railing, starting his way along the catwalk again. "I guess I just needed to hear you say it."

" _Is there something else going on?_ " Claire asked, her voice sounding even more concerned. " _You're not usually this… uncertain about things. How's your shoulder? Have you been doing your exercises?_ "

"Yes, mom," he teased. "Every day." However, her words had him reaching up and rubbing at the shoulder in question. It often ached slightly by the end of the day, especially if he'd spent any amount of time carrying around buckets of food for the raptors. But he tried not to think about it, and tried not to let it impact his actions. It was a balancing act, trying to walk the fine line of being active enough to help it heal without further injuring it from overuse.

" _Ugh, no way, don't call me that,_ " she said, an obvious shudder running through her voice, although it was also tinged with humour. " _But, seriously, everything else okay? How are Blue, Echo and Charlie? And Grape and Olive?_ "

"They're all good," he confirmed, once again peeking down into the paddock, but the girls were still nowhere to be seen. "The girls were on a roll today for the demo for Parker, so that went well. He didn't stick around long enough for Olive and Grape's training session, but he did see them."

" _What did you have them doing today?_ "

"Took them outside again. We had a big storm overnight, and so there was a little stream of water through their play area. They were fascinated by it. Not at all sure what to make of it. A little scared at first. But once they got over that, they spent most of the session splashing around. Actually, I took a video. Let me send it."

He pulled his phone down so he could find the clip and text it to her.

" _Aww,_ " Claire cooed a few seconds later. " _They're adorable._ "

"They are," he agreed. "They're so much fun at this size. You really need to see if you can get back here soon. They're growing up so fast."

" _Oh, that's actually what I was about to tell you,_ " she said. " _I had a meeting with Simon earlier. He's given the go-ahead for new species development. Just one, right now. They think they've got the DNA for an Edmontosaurus._ "

"That's a herbivore, right?" Owen interrupted, stopping at the far end of the catwalk and staring out across Sorna.

The island had a constant hum to it, the sound of leaves rustling and waves crashing against the shore. Of birds chirping and monkeys howling. But, it always sounded somewhat muted in the evening, as if everything collectively held its breath, waiting as the sun finally slipped out of sight.

" _Yeah, one from the duck-billed family,_ " Claire supplied. " _Anyway, apparently he'd been meeting with some investors over in San Jose, and I had a new proposal he thinks they'd be interested in. He wants to bring them over and have me give them a tour._ "

"Oh, fun times," Owen said with a groan and a quick shake of his head.

" _I'm glad you think so,_ " she replied, ignoring his sarcasm, " _as the plan is to actually take them over to Sorna and to show them around there._ "

"What? Why?" He couldn't keep the horrified tone from his voice.

" _The proposal I have is to create a whole program around the development of a new species. To bring the public into the process, in a way. Let them observe how it plays out, the good and the bad. Create some educational components that could be done through schools. Show off our new methodologies and procedures, such as development being over on Sorna, and the increased involvement of behaviourists..._ "

"When would they be coming over?" Owen was frowning. If they were just green-lighting the project now, that had to mean they were still at least weeks, if not months, away from even starting to incubate eggs, much less having them hatch.

The lights on the top of the perimeter fence clicked on, momentarily startling him, and Owen continued his journey along the catwalk.

" _In a couple of weeks,_ " Claire said. " _I know we wouldn't have much to show about the new project, but part of it would just be showing the whole setup. And Grape and Olive are there. We're going to eventually need investors for them, too, since they're likely to become an attraction before anything else._ "

"Oh." Right, the fact he was forever trying to forget. Dammit.

" _I know that's still almost a year away,_ " Claire said, " _but we need to start wooing investors again. We have other, non-animal, projects, too. And, like I've told you before, it's a long process._ "

"So when's this happening?" he asked again, having already forgotten what she'd said.

" _We still need to nail down the date, but, like I said, probably not for a couple of weeks. Which reminds me–_ "

Owen immediately frowned when she cut herself off, already knowing he wasn't about to like what she said next.

"What?"

" _I just… I'm not going to be able to take those days off next week. I'm sorry._ "

He could hear the apology in her tone, and he just knew that she was probably grimacing as she waited for his response, knowing that he wouldn't be happy. And he wasn't. But, it was also who Claire was. And just as she'd been quick to reassure him that she'd be okay with him choosing to not take the job, he knew he needed to do the same here.

"Hey, we always knew that there'd be times our schedules wouldn't align," he said. "It's fine. I've been meaning to upgrade the batteries for the solar panels, this will give me time to finally do that."

" _You sure?_ "

"Yeah, not a problem," Owen repeated. "Besides, I'll still get to see you. But, if you are feeling that bad about it, you know you could just _not_ bring the investors over to Sorna to make it up to me." He grinned, pleased with his solution.

" _Nice try,"_ Claire laughed. " _But, it really won't be that bad. I'll only be bringing them over for a couple of hours, max. Just long enough to get a tour of the space with a focus on the lab. And, of course, to see Grape and Olive. That's it._ "

"Fine," he grumbled. "But Olive and Grape don't really have anything to show off. Not yet."

" _I thought you weren't going to be teaching them tricks?_ "

"I'm not." He winced, knowing his tone was overly defensive.

Claire just laughed. " _It's fine. They'll just want to get a glimpse of them. Besides, they're babies, that's wow enough._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter *really* wasn't supposed to be this long (oops). I hope you enjoyed it anyway. :) This story is still looking to be about 9 chapters long (I'm working on chapter 6 right now). So much shorter than the previous ones. But hopefully a nice wrap up to the whole series.
> 
> Don't forget to follow so you'll get notified when the next chapter posts (I'll be doing Thursday evenings again). And, as always, I appreciate any and all comments/thoughts/reviews you want to share. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

As she stepped off the helicopter, Claire brushed her hair out of her eyes. Even though she'd been growing her hair out for months now and was no longer obsessively straightening it into her sharp bob every morning, the extra length continued to catch her off guard. Tucking it behind her ears, she scanned the area while she waited for the three investors — Helen, Tom and Frank — to disembark. Unfortunately, Owen was nowhere in sight. Probably hiding, she thought, and then had to suppress the snicker that ran through her. She'd been watching for him from the helicopter, but hadn't been able to spot him out at the raptor paddock. She knew he wasn't excited about the investors coming over and that he'd been trying to figure out how he could avoid them. However, she also knew that as much as he wanted to stay away, that she would eventually see him, that he wouldn't manage to dodge them her entire visit.

But, she'd worry more about that later. For now, she needed to get things moving, as they were only meant to be there for a few hours. Turning back to the investors, she gave them a large smile.

"Okay, first up we'll go by the lab so you can meet Dr. Barnes and hear about the work that's going on here," she said with a level of enthusiasm that she had perfected over the years. She pointed towards the lab building and then started heading in that direction, the investors following behind her. "After that, we should have time to take a quick stop in the nursery and see the compys and the raptors."

"We noticed that you've got a few outdoor paddocks here," Helen stated. "It looked like there were a few dinosaurs in the biggest one. Will we get to see them, too?"

Even though she was grimacing inwardly, Claire made sure to keep a chipper tone. "All the dinosaurs we breed here start in the nursery. As they get older, they get moved to outdoor paddocks until they're ready to be moved over to Nublar. The compys that you'll see later will be moving into one of those paddocks soon, and the raptors will move out in another month or so. The Velociraptors you could see from the helicopter belong to a research project that InGen has been conducting over the last few years. Those raptors live here permanently, thus why they have such a large paddock."

"Wait, there are full grown raptors here?" Tom asked, equally impressed and curious. "I thought there were just the baby ones you mentioned."

"There are three grown ones," Claire explained. "But, like I said, they do not belong to Jurassic World."

"Can we see them anyway?" Helen asked again, as Tom and Frank nodded eagerly.

"We'll see how things go," Claire replied, not wanting to say yes. She knew the last thing Owen would want was more visitors to his girls. But, it was also her job to make the investors happy. And getting to see the full grown raptors could help give them understand what Olive and Grape would eventually be like.

As they reached the lab building, Claire opened the door and ushered them in ahead of her. She was pleased to see that Greg — Dr. Barnes — must have been watching for them, as he immediately stepped out of one of the side rooms and joined them in the entry area.

While Greg had worked at Jurassic World for almost as long as Claire, she'd rarely interacted with him before. Henry had always liked to be the main contact point between upper management and the lab, and Claire was still adjusting to the change.

Things were, objectively, better working with Greg than with Henry. Greg was much more friendly and didn't feel the same need that Henry always had to keep everything hidden. Greg also liked to talk about his work and to share what they were doing and why. But, it had its downsides. Claire had become so used to how Henry did everything, that she found the amount of information she had access to now almost overwhelming. While it was nice to not worry that important information was being kept from her, she sort of missed how Henry would boil everything down to just the most salient details. She'd never realized how useful it was that she didn't have to try to wade through all the information herself. She was still hopeful she could get Greg to learn how to do that.

"Helen, Frank, Tom, this is our chief scientist, Dr. Barnes. He's going to give you a tour of the lab and talk a bit more about the project we're proposing," Claire said, quickly introducing everyone before letting Greg take over.

Claire was happy to be able to step back and no longer be the point of focus. If it had been Henry, she'd probably have even pulled out her phone and hung back even farther, knowing she could work through emails while he gave his spiel. But, this was the first time she was seeing Greg in action, and she knew she needed to be alert, ready to jump in, in case there were questions he couldn't answer, or to keep him from giving away more information than the investors should have access to.

"Thanks, Claire," Greg said, before turning his attention to the investors. "I thought I'd start off with a quick tour through the building so you can get an idea of the process, and then we can talk a bit more in detail about the proposal. I think the added context will be helpful."

Claire watched as the investors nodded, and then Greg directed them over to one side of the entryway where there were windows looking into one of the rooms. "This, here, is our embryo cold storage room. All of our specimens are kept frozen until we are ready to actually implant them into eggs. Here we also store many of the various genetic strains that we are currently working with — both possible new dinosaurs as well as those from the various species we use for filling in the gaps."

As Greg led the investors on the tour, Claire was happy to discover that she really didn't need to do much. He managed to keep the terminology simple enough for everyone to understand and also to keep everything high level, not getting bogged down in any of the details. They finished up the tour in the hatchery, which was a large room containing all the incubators. Most of them were currently empty, but there were two currently containing eggs, which Claire knew were Apatosaurus and Gallimimus.

The group gathered around one incubator, watching as the robotic arm reached out, picking up the eggs and rotating them before placing them back down.

"Most of the species we breed take between eight and twelve weeks to incubate," Greg informed everyone. "These eggs are about six weeks along and contain Apatosauruses. They usually take around 10 weeks, so there's still a ways to go."

"Why is there a sort of fog in there?" Frank asked, pointing at the eggs, which did look like they were sitting in their own little fog bank.

"The eggs require a very specific environment in order to develop properly," Greg answered. "Each incubator works to maintain a precise temperature and humidity. They vary slightly from species to species. While our methods have improved greatly over the years, we still lose a number of eggs in each batch. The whole process is quite fragile, and so we do our best to control as much of it as we can."

Claire found herself involuntarily wincing at the use of the word _control_. It was sort of funny, although not in a "haha" way, that not that long ago it was a word she'd happily used to describe her work. But, the last couple of years had opened her eyes to just how little control she actually had. She was still trying to come to grips with it all, and to get better at just going with the flow — with a huge emphasis on _trying_.

Owen loved to tease her about her love of control. She knew he was doing it good-naturedly, and she could take it that way (most days). And she also knew that he was often trying to help her relax, especially when things started to feel like they were spiraling too far out of her control and she'd start to get worked up. So much of her life these days felt like it was about trying to walk a fine line between chaos and order.

"Oh, please don't touch any of the eggs," Greg said, as Tom started to reach into the nest. "The eggs are actually porous. Bacteria from your hand can enter them and can interfere with the whole process. Not only does the robotic arm continually rotate the eggs for us, to simulate what would be happening if they were in a real nest, but it's also constantly monitoring the status of each one, such as checking their temperatures and heat signatures. As the eggs mature, it will also monitor movement within them, informing us of any abnormalities it detects."

"If there's a problem, are you able to actually intervene?" Helen asked, seemingly impressed by the information. "Can you do anything?"

"Not usually," Greg admitted. "But the sooner in the process we catch any issues, the sooner we can start our analysis into what went wrong. And that enables us to react faster. Occasionally, we'll discover a problem with one egg that is actually a problem across the entire batch. In those cases, it's actually better to terminate the whole batch prematurely instead of allowing animals to fully develop. It takes a lot of work to go from the original DNA strand to a hatched dinosaur. But it's less work if we can cut our losses early and move onto making the improvements necessary."

Claire watched as the three investors nodded their understanding. She was glad that Owen wasn't there for this part of Greg's spiel, as she knew he wouldn't like the clinical way the process was being described, as if the decision to terminate a batch had nothing to do with a living creature. Although, as Claire had argued with him before, they only chose to terminate when the batch was unlikely to survive.

"It's not often, anymore, that we have to terminate a whole batch," Claire added, not wanting to deter the investors as all three turned to her. "Like Greg — Dr. Barnes — has said, it's a long process before we even get to the point that we implant them. We have a lot of checks along the way before we move research from one step to the next. The Edmontosaurus project that we're proposing, has been in the works for a while. The reason we're proposing it now is precisely because we _are_ near the point where we can start incubating the eggs. We understand that people's attention spans can be short, and so we want to bring them in at the more exciting stage of the process."

As they switched topics over to talking about the proposal that Claire had presented to them earlier that day, before they had flown over to Sorna, Claire found herself once again fully engaged. This was a topic she felt both knowledgeable and really passionate about. She fully believed that there would be many ways to make the whole process exciting and engaging for people of all ages, and that it could also be seen as a springboard to get more people interested in science.

After a while, the questions from the investors started to peter out and Claire thanked Dr. Barnes for his time. As she ushered them out of the hatchery, she suggested, "Let's go check in at the nursery."

o-o-o

When Owen had first heard the helicopter off in the distance, he'd beelined for his office, determined to stay out of sight and not end up getting roped into helping with Claire's visit. He knew he was being a bit petty, but he didn't care.

His original hope had been that Claire would come over with the investors and then be able to ditch them during their tour and he'd get a chance to see her for a bit. However, when those hopes had been dashed, he'd decided that it would probably be in his best interest to just avoid her visit at all cost. He just _knew_ that if Claire spotted him, he'd somehow get sucked into doing some sort of tour or giving some sort of presentation or something. And no thanks, he did _not_ want to do that.

So, even though he knew it made him a coward, he'd retreated to (hidden in) his office while he waited for the helicopter to land. Actually, he didn't even go all the way into his office. He stood just inside the doors of the building, watching until he saw them disembark and then disappear into the lab building.

He would admit that he felt momentarily guilty when he saw Claire glancing around with a wistful look when she first stepped off. But it wasn't enough to compel him to step outside.

Once he was sure they were inside, he waited for another couple of minutes to make sure they weren't going to turn around and come right back out, before he hurried back across the field to the raptors. As much as he'd like to just hide out the whole time he _did_ have work he needed to do.

Besides, there were only so many places to hide. If Claire really wanted to find him, he knew he'd be out of luck.

o-o-o

As Claire led the investors to the nursery, she realized that she'd probably should've prepared someone to meet her there. Someone who could give them a quick overview of the dinosaurs and what was currently happening with them. She hadn't, because she'd sort of thought that Owen would join her, a thought, she was now realizing, was mostly wishful thinking. Oh well, she knew enough about the basics behind both species she was sure she could answer most of their questions.

Opening the door to the nursery, Claire was surprised (and a bit relieved) when she realized she could hear someone moving about within.

"Oh, hey, Claire," Zia greeted them, exiting out of one of the siderooms off the main hallway in front of them. She looked momentarily surprised to see them. "I forgot you were coming over today."

"Hi, Zia." Claire smiled at her. Zia would actually be even better than Owen, really, for the investors. Zia's enthusiasm for the dinosaurs was contagious and she was always happy to talk about them to anyone who would listen. "Helen, Tom, Frank, this is Dr. Zia Rodriguez. She's the resident veterinarian on Sorna and takes care of all the baby dinosaurs."

"Hello," Zia greeted the investors politely, who all echoed her greeting back.

"Zia, we just had a tour around the lab building. Do you have a few minutes to give us a quick look at the compys and the raptors?"

"Sure," Zia nodded. "I was just about to feed the compys." She held up the bucket that Claire hadn't noticed she was holding. "Let's go see them first."

Everyone trailed after Zia as she led them down the short hallway and then opened a door into a small room. Inside the room there was a chain link fence separating the compys from the entrance area. The little dinosaurs, still only about a foot long from head to the end of their tail (they would grow up to be just over three feet), were hopping about in their cage, some playing with the various objects scattered about. But at the sound of the door, and as Claire and the others entered, they all froze for a second, before racing towards the fence.

It wasn't until Claire stepped fully into the room that she realized the bottom few feet of fencing had a layer of chicken wire wrapped along it, as the compys were so thin and wiry and would've been able to escape through the regular fencing.

Claire had a love-hate relationship with the compys. On one hand, she thought they were kind of cute, considering how tiny they were, and she liked watching them run about. But, on the other hand, she knew what they were capable of, and of the deaths they had been responsible for. It was sometimes hard to reconcile the two images she had of them.

"These guys are master escape artists," Zia told the investors as she moved towards the fence, explaining the chicken wire. "They're so lithe they can slip through the smallest cracks. We're always keeping a close eye on them." Zia reached out and Claire realized there was a door in the fence. However, Zia didn't try to open it, reaching instead for a smaller hatch. "Because of that, we try to not open the full door as much as possible. It's not fun trying to chase these guys down. They're also fast."

Once Zia had the hatch open, she pulled on a latex glove and started reaching into the bucket she held, pulling out handfuls of food, which she tossed into the caged area, scattering it about. The compys were easily distracted by the food, all of them darting away from the fence to chase down the various morsels. Once the bucket was empty, Zia pulled off her glove and dropped it inside.

"Claire mentioned that these guys will be going outside soon," Frank said, stepping closer to the fence. "How do you keep them contained out there?"

"Similarly to how we do so in here," Zia replied. "All of our paddocks have a double gated entry system, which we mimic in here with the door into the room, and then the fence separating the dinosaurs from the door. While the compys are lithe, and while they've got a strong bite, they aren't able to bite through metal. Unlike many of the species, to keep them contained it's less about the strength of the fencing, and more about just making sure there are no gaps and holes anywhere."

"And if they get out?" Helen asked hesitantly, and Claire noticed that she'd stayed far away from the fence.

"They've already got trackers," Zia replied. "While they're fast and not fun to chase after, they're also pretty easily tempted by food."

"They're definitely enjoying their meal," Tom said, and everyone's gazes turned back into the cage. The compys had already devoured most of what had been tossed in.

"And soon they'll be begging for more," Zia laughed. "Sometimes they kind of remind me of dogs."

"Not quite so cuddly," Claire interjected.

"No, not so much," Zia agreed. She turned back towards the door. "How about we go see Olive and Grape, the raptors?"

Immediately there were enthusiastic nods and voiced agreements, and Helen opened up the door and eagerly slipped back out into the hallway first, the rest of them following after her. They waited while Zia dropped off the now empty bucket, before following her down the hall to a door at the end.

As they entered the raptors area, just like the compys the raptors raced towards the fence to get a good look at their visitors. While Claire had actually been over to the island a couple of times in the past few months and had seen them before, not to mention all the videos that Owen had passed along, she was still amazed by how much they'd already grown.

While they were a few weeks younger than the compys they were already almost double the size, as they were fast approaching two feet from head to tip of their tail. Of course, part of what made them look bigger was just that they weren't so thin. In comparison to the compys, they actually kind of looked like chubby toddlers, a thought which had Claire trying to hide a snicker.

"Which one is–?" Tom asked as he approached the fence, before cutting himself off. "Nevermind, it's pretty clear who's who." He crouched down opposite the two raptors, who were clutching at the fence, their gazes darting between all the visitors.

"These ones are younger?" Frank asked, looking doubtful. "They're so much bigger."

"They're almost a month younger than the compys," Zia confirmed. "But they're larger when born, and will end up approaching six feet in height when fully grown. The compys will only be a couple feet tall"

"How come these ones have names?" Helen asked, and Claire noticed she was once again hovering by the door. She did, however, look slightly less afraid of the raptors, which, in Claire's opinion, was a completely backwards reaction.

"The compys do, too," Zia said before Claire could speak up. "All the dinosaurs do, actually. But it can be hard for most people to tell most of them apart, so they're used more by the vets and handlers. These two," she looked fondly into the cage at Olive and Grape, who were now playing tug-of-war with a knotted piece of rope, "well, it's easy enough to tell them apart. And unlike the compys, they're actually receiving some training."

"Really?" Tom asked as he stood back up. No longer having an audience, Grape turned away and lunged towards an orange ball, trying to bite it, while Olive followed after her sister. "What kind of training?"

"Um." Zia looked over at Claire.

"This is the first time we're considering having raptors as an attraction," Claire jumped in smoothly. "As the raptors are one of the most dangerous and intelligent dinosaurs we've got, we're taking extra precautions as we move forward with planning their exhibit. We have two animal behaviourists, Owen and Barry, who are working with Olive and Grape to get them accustomed to the presence of humans."

"Does this mean they'll be able to do tricks?" Helen asked, finally taking a step farther into the room and closer to the fence. She seemed less afraid now that the raptors were no longer watching them.

Claire struggled to not roll her eyes, actually _grateful_ that Owen was not around to hear that.

"No, no tricks. It's more about working with them on their temperament. We don't want them to be attacking the fences or walls of their paddock or any other potentially risky behaviour. While we hope to move them over to Nublar at the end of this year, or early next year, it will depend highly on how their training progresses. We take the safety of our guests _and_ our employees very seriously. This training is to make sure that when– _if_ we move them over, it will be safe for everyone involved."

"Hmm," Helen hummed, her gaze turning thoughtful. Claire was sure she was running risk-reward calculations in her head.

"The Edmontosaurus project that we're proposing contains different risks," Claire quickly added. "There we will have the struggles of producing viable embryos and then hatching them. Of course, that whole process is part of the project we're proposing, so even possible failures still provide benefits. However, once they _do_ hatch — and we are confident we will get there — the dinosaurs are herbivores. We will not be dealing with the same potential behavioural issues. And, to be clear, we don't actually expect to have any issues with Olive and Grape, we're just being extra cautious."

"What sort of experience do these trainers have?" Frank asked, his gaze focused on Olive and Grape. Olive had abandoned her sister and was dragging a different toy across the area. "I can't imagine there's a lot of dinosaur trainers out there."

"You're right, there aren't," Claire agreed, starting to relax as they focused on a topic she felt comfortable talking about. "While do have a large team of animal behaviourists who work over on Nublar, Owen and Barry, however, have extra expertise. They actually work for InGen and have been working on a separate raptor project over the past few years–"

"Wait, do you mean the other raptors that are here, those ones?" Tom interrupted.

"Yes," Claire nodded.

"Have they been _training_ those ones?" Tom's eyes were wide.

"Yes, sort of," Claire hedged.

They _were_ training them, but she knew that Owen would strongly disagree that they were doing the type of training that Tom was likely thinking of. He'd vented to her more than once that what he was doing with his girls was _research_ and not the type of stuff to make an animal jump through hoops or play with a ball so they could perform 'tricks' for humans. Claire would always have to bite her tongue when he ranted, as more than once he'd sent her videos of the raptors where they were essentially playing with a ball. And, as she watched Olive and Grape now, Claire was starting to think that all the raptors really do enjoy playing with balls.

"Can we see what he's been able to do?" Frank spoke up. "You mentioned we might be able to see those raptors?"

Wincing internally, Claire forced out a bright smile. "Sure, why not."

o-o-o

Owen's favourite days were those when he got so sucked into what he was doing that he completely lost track of time. On those days, he'd find the sun setting and he'd wonder where the time had gone and couldn't the sun _please_ hold off for another hour or two as he wasn't done yet. On the other hand were the frustrating days, the ones that had him longing for nightfall when he could retreat back to his room to lick his metaphorical wounds.

He still wasn't quite sure how he'd categorize today. The morning hadn't gone gone well as he'd been so distracted keeping half an eye on the sky watching for the inevitable helicopter, that he'd been unable to hold the raptors' attention, their own focus as fleeting as his. But once he'd returned after the helicopter had arrived, things had started to look up.

Finally no longer burdened with wondering _when_ Claire and the investors would arrive and also feeling confident that he'd be able to avoid them for the rest of their visit (Claire had already told him that the girls weren't on her itinerary), Owen had been able to give the raptors his full attention. And they, in return, had rewarded him with theirs. So far, the afternoon training session was turning out to be a success.

Well, it _had been_ , until his attention was finally broken by the sound of many feet stomping up the stairs to the catwalk. He tried to ignore them, and then tried to ignore the not so quiet " _shh!_ " that accompanied them. But, not only had they caught his attention, they had also caught the raptors, their gazes shifting away from him and over towards where the stairs met the catwalk.

Bracing his hands on the railing in front of him, Owen hung his head for a long moment, silently cursing, already knowing who he was going to find, before he finally stood up and turned towards the stairs. He didn't even bother with attempting to force out a smile.

"Owen," Claire greeted when he finally faced her, and he gave her a curt nod. "Tom, Frank and Helen here were hoping to get a chance to see your girls. They had some questions about the training Olive and Grape are receiving, and we thought it might be easier to talk directly with you."

When she finished, she silently mouthed "sorry" towards him, her gaze pleading with him to cooperate. Owen sighed heavily, knowing that there really wasn't much he could do. He quickly dismissed the raptors before pulling out the rag from his back pocket and walking towards the group as he wiped his hands.

"Hi," he greeted the three investors, reaching out to shake their hands. He spared a quick glance towards Claire, torn between annoyance over the interruption and relief of seeing her. "Um, what did you want to know?"

"Why don't you introduce the raptors first?" Claire suggested as she peered down into the paddock. Owen followed her gaze and wasn't surprised to see that the three raptors had hung around and were alternating between staring up at them and chittering amongst themselves.

"Sure," he agreed. He waved for the investors to take a step closer to the railing so they could more easily see down into the paddock. "The one on the left is Echo, the one in the middle is Blue, and the third one there is Charlie."

When he finished, he glanced over at Claire who gave him a bit of a glare and a sharp head tilt towards the raptors. Stifling a sigh, he offered up a bit more information.

"The raptors are about six and a half years old. Raptors, somewhat similar to wolves, form packs. Blue–" As he said her name, the raptor glanced up at him. "Blue is the alpha of the pack. Although Echo does like to still challenge her occasionally. Charlie, on the other hand, suffered an injury a couple of years back that has left her with a bit of a limp, so she's happy to defer to either of her sisters."

The investors nodded along as he spoke, but their gazes were locked on the raptors in the paddock, and so when Owen finished, he took the opportunity to step back towards Claire, lowering his voice.

"I thought you said you weren't going to show them my girls?" he hissed. "What happened?"

"They had questions after seeing Olive and Grape, and, well, like you said, the babies don't do much right now. They were more interested in hearing more about the training," she whispered back.

"You know, I distinctly remember you telling me that the babies would be ' _wow enough_.' "

When Claire looked up at him, Owen just raised an eyebrow, a smirk on his face.

However, before Claire could say anything, one of the investors turned back towards them.

"So, what kind of training do you do with them? Claire said they're a research project?"

"Yeah," Owen said, rejoining them at the railing. "We've been studying them ever since they were born. We're interested in learning all we can about the raptors, with a focus on their intelligence. Notes and records about the first batch of raptors that were created for Jurassic Park have always focused heavily on just how intelligent the raptors were. That they were able to problem solve, such as when they figured out how to open doors—"

A shrill alarm suddenly blaring out across the encampment cut Owen off. Startled, he spun around, trying to figure out where it was coming from and what was going on. The alarm continued to blast out every few seconds, and it was quickly accompanied by the raptors starting to screech in distress from below. Owen turned back to the paddock, looking down to see that all three of them were now moving about agitatedly as they got increasingly worked up.

Out of the corner of his eye, Owen could see that Claire was also looking around frantically, worry etched across her face, while the investors were all covering their ears. However, he didn't have time to pay them any attention. Instead he searched the catwalk until he finally caught sight of one of the guards (there was always at least one near the raptor paddock, especially if he or Barry were working). He quickly pushed past everyone as he raced towards the guard.

"You gotta turn that off," Owen shouted at the guard. "Turn it off!"

The guard pulled out his radio and quickly said something that Owen couldn't make out. A few seconds later the alarm finally stopped and for a brief moment, everything felt unnaturally still and quiet. It was quickly interrupted as the raptors continued to screech out their displeasure.

Skidding to a stop by the guard, Owen demanded, "What's going on?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, benefit(?) of a shorter story is that we're going to get to the action much faster. :) Hope you're ready.
> 
> (PS - I posted a really short snapshot on the weekend. 🤓)


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"What's going on?" Owen demanded, his hands on his hips as he stared at Cam Rivers, one of the ACU guards stationed on Sorna. "What's wrong?"

The raptors were still screeching in agitation and kicking up enough of a fuss that Owen hadn't heard Claire following him. He was pretty sure it was only because he was so tense that he didn't jump in surprise when he felt her hand land on his arm. He gave her a brief glance, before refocusing on Cam, still waiting for an answer.

"What was that alarm for?" Claire asked, but Cam held up his hand, turning slightly away from them as he listened to what was coming through his radio. Owen strained to hear what was being said, but he'd always hated having to try to separate out the voices from the static that always seemed to be present no matter the quality of the radios.

"Something tripped our perimeter warning system," Cam finally informed them as he lowered the radio back to his side. He quickly added, "They're still trying to figure out _what_."

Owen felt Claire's hand grip his arm a bit tighter as she asked haltingly, "Like… an _animal_?"

"Could be," Cam admitted. "Whatever it was, it tripped a motion sensor. So it could also just be a tree branch or something."

"Would that be enough?" Owen asked, his brow furrowing. Surely if a tree branch could set the system off this shouldn't be the first time that he could remember it ever being tripped.

"If a big enough branch fell, yeah," Cam said. "The system's pretty good and can filter out stuff like branches swaying in the wind. It requires pretty significant movement to actually get tripped. They're going over the camera feeds right now. My guess is it'll probably turn out to be a puma."

Finally relaxing slightly, Owen started to pay more attention to his raptors. While they had quieted down slightly, they were still clearly unhappy, pacing about the area below.

"What's going on?"

The new voice had Owen turning around, finally remembering the investors who had been on the catwalk with them, to see that the three had all wandered over to join them. While they were all staying far from the inner railing, they were continually looking down at the raptors. One of the guys looked mostly curious while the other two looked outright fearful.

"One of the motion sensors was tripped." Claire smoothly stepped in before anyone else could say anything. "It's probably just one of the wild animals on the island, or a tree, or something."

"Oh," the female investor said. She peered down at the raptors before turning her attention to Owen. "Are they okay?"

"They're not a fan of being startled, or loud noises when they don't know where they're coming from," Owen answered, already trying to work out what he could do to calm them down. "I just need–"

He was cut off when Cam, who had briefly stepped away from the group when his radio had crackled, returned.

"While we have no reasons to believe there's any actual issue, our protocol does require that all personnel go inside until we've had a chance to do a complete check of the perimeter," Cam informed them. He directed his gaze towards Claire. "Ms. Dearing, if you and your visitors could please go wait in the cafeteria."

"Sure," Claire immediately agreed with a nod. She looked around the area and then down at the raptors briefly before turning to Owen. "No problem. Owen?"

Owen knew what she was asking, but he shook his head, directing his response to both Claire and Cam. "I need to calm the raptors down first. I'll come join you as soon as I do that." When Cam looked ready to interrupt, Owen continued. "I can't leave them out here this worked up. It'll just make things worse and they're liable to hurt themselves or each other. I'm going to grab a bucket of treats. If you can keep the alarm off, it really shouldn't take long."

There was a long moment where Owen was pretty sure Cam was going to push back, before he finally nodded his consent.

Owen turned and looked back down at the raptors. They were still moving about with agitation, the occasional screech still breaking the silence that, since the alarm had been shut, still felt almost unnatural. Charlie, who continued to be fearful of change, was trying to stick close to her sisters. However, Blue and Echo were busy scanning the area, probably trying to figure out the source of the potential threat, and were both snapping at Charlie when she got in their way. In return, Owen could tell that Charlie was getting increasingly worked up, and her limp was becoming more and more pronounced.

"They okay?" Claire asked, her voice low as she stood beside him, resting her hand briefly over his on the railing.

"Yeah, they will be," Owen replied, scrubbing at his jaw before glancing down into the paddock a last time. Turning back to the investors, he forced out a smile, more for their sake than Claire's — he knew she'd be able to see right through it — and gestured towards the stairs. "C'mon, I'll head down with you. You guys should get inside."

o-o-o

As Claire hustled the investors across the field, she found herself continually looking back towards the raptor paddock where she could still hear the occasional screech. As they passed by Barry, who was hurrying across the field towards the paddock, she exchanged a quick nod with him. She was glad that Owen was going to have some support and wished she'd been able to stay behind to offer it herself.

Stepping into the cafeteria building, Claire could hear a low hum of chatter from the few other personnel who had also been directed to stay in there. She quickly glanced into the two sitting areas, but she didn't see Zia or Greg or any of the other workers that she somewhat knew and so she ushered the investors into the emptier of the two rooms.

As they settled down at a table, she looked around, hoping for a distraction.

"Coffee?" she suggested, spotting the setup on a table at the end of the room. Tom was the only one who took her up on it, and the two of them quickly filled their cups before returning to the table.

"Is it always this exciting over here?" Helen asked, her eyes wide.

"Um, no, not really," Claire replied, before quickly taking a sip of her coffee for cover.

It was not like she could (or wanted to) tell them about the robbery that had occurred the previous fall. And, really, that was the only other significant event that she knew about. After Owen had been attacked by Fern (and she still believed it qualified as an attack, no matter what Owen said or how small Fern had been at the time), she'd made it a habit to pore over all the security reports about any incidents that arose on Sorna. Considering that no one had felt the need to reach out to her when Owen had been injured, she no longer trusted Owen (or anyone on Sorna, really) to give her a heads up if something else happened. She also knew that she and Owen had different criteria for what should be considered a big deal versus something that could be glossed over.

"What other animals are on the island?" Frank asked, his hands clasped together and resting on the table in front of him. Now that they were indoors, he no longer looked nervous.

"Monkeys, pumas, small rodents, lots of various species of birds," Claire listed off. "I think the pumas are the largest. But this island has a very similar biome to Nublar, and both of them are actually quite similar to the mainland."

As she filled them in on the bit of knowledge she did have about the diversity of plants and animals, she purposefully didn't mention the one thing that kept cycling through her mind: dinosaurs. After all, Sorna had been formally used as Site B and had once hosted a relatively diverse population of dinosaurs after the first Jurassic Park. While Claire still believed that Masrani had been successful in capturing all of them and moving them over to Nublar back before Jurassic World had initially opened, she knew that Owen had never quite bought it. She hated that now there was a little niggling shred of doubt that didn't want to leave her alone.

Claire kept reminding herself that the new encampment had been on Sorna for more than a year now. That if there _were_ other dinosaurs on the island, odds were that they'd have spotted them by now. Really, when they hadn't discovered anything during the open field test that Owen had run last spring, she had been more convinced than ever that the island really was dinosaur-free — well, minus the ones within the encampment.

Owen had bugged her more than once that if she was right, and if others agreed with her, why did they still feel the need to continue to surround the encampment with the tall perimeter fences? Why couldn't the employees be allowed to roam outside? She'd stumbled over answers, not really sure. And then she'd actually asked those questions directly to the ACU, so she'd be prepared the next time he asked.

Their answer had been that it was extra security for the dinosaurs that Jurassic World was breeding, and was just as much about keeping those dinosaurs _in_ as it was about keeping anything else on the island out. The explanation had made sense to her, although when she'd told Owen he'd simply said that still didn't explain why he and the others weren't allowed out during their free time. Claire had just countered that she didn't trust him not to fall off a cliff if he went exploring on his own, and they didn't have the manpower on Sorna to stage a rescue. Considering at the time he'd been recovering from a nasty burn to his forearm after tripping by a fire he'd built, he'd smartly chosen to stop while he was ahead.

As the investors started to chat amongst themselves, no longer needing her direct input in the conversation, Claire continued to let her thoughts wander. She wondered how the raptors were doing, and how long it would be before Owen showed up. And, she also wondered just how long they were going to be stuck inside.

A glance at her watch showed it was getting close to the time she'd been originally planning for them to fly back to Nublar. And, actually, if they were going to be stuck inside…

Excusing herself, Claire pushed back from the table and headed back out to the entry area. She found that there was now a guard stationed at the front door, obviously in charge of making sure no one left before the area was cleared.

"Are they almost done?" she asked, approaching him.

"Not quite," he answered. "They're still not sure what tripped the alarm, so they want to do some more recon."

"Hmm," she hummed, glancing out the window in the door, but the bit of outside area she could see just looked normal. "If this is going to take much longer, can you ask if it'd be okay if we left? We were supposed to be heading back to Nublar around now anyway."

"Sure," the guard answered, pulling his radio off his belt. She waited while he had a quick back and forth with someone, before he turned back to her, shaking his head. "Matt said they'd like to keep the helicopter here in case they need to take it out. But he doesn't think it'll be much longer."

"Fine," Claire sighed, turning back towards the room with the investors. So much for any hope that she'd be able to stick to the rest of her schedule for the day.

o-o-o

Owen had thought that by the time he'd get the raptors calmed down the whole security incident would be over. After all, how long did it take to review some footage, walk the perimeter fence (the interior of it) and determine that there was nothing there? If it had been a puma (or something similar to that), and Owen was betting that it was, it was not like the animal would have stuck around to wave at them.

When they still hadn't heard that things were fine, and the raptors had been calmed, Owen and Barry had tried to look busy, neither of them all that excited by the idea of being relegated into a building to wait. Besides, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so they might as well at least attempt to continue with their normal plans.

However, Cam wasn't having it, and while he did let them hang around for an extra ten minutes, he eventually ushered them away from the paddock. "Sorry, but you really do need to go indoors. If we allow you to stay out here, next thing you know we'll have everyone wandering around."

Owen didn't really believe that was true, but he also didn't want to make Cam's job anymore difficult, and so he and Barry had left the paddock and started across the field. Originally, they had started towards their office, but as they neared the buildings, Owen drew up short.

"Dammit." He looked over at the cafeteria building and hung his head as he let out a sigh.

"What?" Barry asked, following his gaze.

"Claire," Owen said simply.

If he had a legitimate reason that he needed to be working right now, he knew that Claire wouldn't care if he went to his office. But, he didn't. And he knew that Claire would know that, too. And not only that, but he was now remembering that he told her that he'd come join them when he was done. He turned on his heel and started towards the cafeteria, surprised when Barry fell into step beside him.

"You don't have to come," Owen said, looking over at his friend. "Just because I need to…"

"It's fine," Barry shrugged. "Besides, I could use a snack. And I heard something earlier about cookies..."

Chuckling, Owen just shook his head as they crossed over to the building. Cookies were Barry's weakness.

Entering the cafeteria, he spotted Claire and headed towards her. There was a smattering of employees inside, but the dining rooms weren't even close to full. Most of the employees on the island were either scientists, who were probably being kept cooped up in their lab, or members of the ACU, who would actually have a job to do right now. It was just the remaining few, the cooks, the couple of paddock techs, or those who hadn't been working when it happened, who were inside.

Claire had chosen a table with four chairs, two on either side, and since they were all occupied, Owen snagged a chair from a nearby table and put it over to the end closest to Claire.

"Hey." Claire smiled up at him when he sat down, and his annoyance over being there versus hiding in his office vanished when she reached out to clasp his hand. "Charlie okay? And Blue and Echo?"

While he knew that Claire cared about all of his raptors, for some reason she seemed to always single out Charlie first when she'd ask about them.

"Yeah, they're good," Owen said. "We bribed them with some treats and I ran them through a couple of easy drills and they looked fine. Charlie's limp is a bit more pronounced, so I'll probably have Zia take a quick look later, but I think it's just from being worked up."

Before he could say anything more, Barry, who had veered off when they'd entered the building, showed up. He placed a plate loaded with chocolate chip cookies onto the table before also grabbing a nearby chair and pulling it over to join them.

"Cookies?" Barry offered as he grabbed one and took a big bite.

Owen reached out as well, but before he bit in, he noticed that the three investors were looking a bit puzzled. "This is Barry, he works with me on training the raptors."

The investors nodded, and one reached out for a cookie when Owen pushed the plate closer to the center of the table.

Unlike Owen, Barry was pretty social, and almost immediately he managed to engage the investors in conversation. Not that Owen was complaining, he was more than happy to sit back and not be forced to participate. He was a bit surprised when Claire leaned towards him. While she was still holding his hand, it was under the table and out of sight of the investors — Claire was not a fan of any overt displays of affection, especially around those she worked with.

He was less surprised when it turned out she was leaning over just so she could grill him. "Have you heard anything? Why's this taking so long? What's going on? I need to get back to Nublar."

"So why don't you go back?" he whispered back. "What's keeping you here?"

"They want the helicopter to stick around in case they need it," Claire sighed. "Have they found something?"

"Not that I know of," he said, before admitting, "To be honest, I thought by the time we calmed the raptors down this would all be over. They must have seen something."

"Something… like what?" Claire wondered. "What could be on this island that would make them think we need to stay inside?"

"I don't know, I mean, the only thing that comes to mind..." he trailed off, giving a loose shrug when she looked at him, but he knew that she knew what he meant. In fact, he would place bets that her thoughts had already gone there.

o-o-o

Twenty minutes after Owen showed up, Claire couldn't take it anymore. She stood up from the table and headed back out to the entryway. She wasn't all that surprised when she heard Owen's chair scrape across the floor behind her, before his footsteps followed after her.

"Okay, what's going on?" she demanded, as she walked back up to the guard who was still standing by the front door. She didn't even wait for him to respond. "And if you won't tell me, where's Matt? Tell him I want to talk to him."

"Um." The guard's gaze jumped between Claire and his radio a few times, and then over to Owen, as if he hoped that Owen would save him.

"If you don't tell me, I'm going to go out there," Claire said, taking a step towards the door.

She didn't need Owen's help to get what she wanted, and she was definitely not going to let the guard think that he could use Owen to calm her down. This had gone on long enough, it was time she had answers. They were lucky she'd been as patient as she had been. And she'd only managed to hold off so long because of the presence of the investors.

The guard ended up being saved by his radio, when it crackled and a tinny voice came out. " _We've spotted something on the feeds._ "

"What? Spotted what?" Claire asked, reaching for the guards radio only to be stopped when Owen grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand back. She glared at him.

"Let him answer it," Owen said, completely unfazed by her glare.

While the guard did unhook his radio, he didn't say anything into it, just holding it up so they could all hear the chatter. It wasn't being directed at him, anyway — it was just being broadcast on the shared channel to the entire ACU team. However, whoever was speaking didn't share much more, just asking for Matt to head to control.

"Let's go," Claire said, once again trying to step towards the door. She wanted to be there to hear and see what was going on in person. The guard stepped in front of her, blocking her access. "Really?" She forced herself not to glare as she held out her hand. "Then give me the radio."

Instead of doing so, the guard quickly spoke into it. "Matt, Ms. Dearing would like to join you at control."

The reply was almost immediate: " _She's still here? Sure, send her over._ "

Looking triumphant, Claire stepped forward for a third time as the guard finally moved aside. She barely managed to bite back her chuckle when she heard the guard briefly try to stop Owen from following after her, before giving up.

"You could be nicer, you know," Owen commented once they'd started towards the office building where they could see Matt ahead of them entering. "He's just doing his job."

"And I'm just trying to do mine," she growled back. "They shouldn't be keeping me out of the loop."

Owen just chuckled as he reached for her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. "I know. Let's see what they have to say."

When she looked up at him, surprised he wasn't pushing back, he leaned down and kissed her quickly. Her gaze immediately darted around the area to see who may have been watching, but no one else was out there.

"Sorry, I didn't get a chance to give you a proper hello earlier," he said with a quick grin when her gaze returned to his.

Deciding to focus instead on enjoying the feel of his hand clasped around hers, Claire took a few seconds to pretend that they were just out for a walk. Of course, the notion was spoiled a bit when her gaze drifted upwards and she realized that she could now see dark clouds out over the horizon. She hoped that didn't mean a storm was heading their way. She really needed to get back to Nublar.

As they entered the building, Claire reluctantly pulled her hand free from Owen's, glad when he didn't comment or protest, easily letting go. This was one of the downsides of working with the person you were dating — if she was seen being affectionate with him, people seemed to take it as meaning that she was no longer capable of doing her job. She was well aware of all the rumours and speculation that they would get married and that once they did, she'd stop working.

But, she didn't have time to dwell on any of those thoughts right now as they entered the control room. Inside there were two guards sitting at the desks while Matt stood behind and between them. The wall they were all facing was covered with a number of monitors. On the main one, which was the largest and in the centre, there was a frozen image from one of the security feeds. However, what the guards at control had thought they'd seen Claire couldn't tell, as it just looked like an average shot of the jungle to her.

"What's going on? What did you find?" Claire asked, stepping up beside Matt. Owen came to a stop on her other side.

"Ms. Dearing," Matt greeted her, with a quick glance in her direction, before looking past her, "Owen."

"Claire," she reminded Matt, before pointing towards the center screen. "What am I looking at?"

"This is from one of the cameras where the motion sensor was tripped," he explained. "If you look near the upper right…"

Claire squinted, trying to make out what Matt could see.

"Is that a monkey?" Owen asked and Claire was relieved he seemed to be able to understand what they were looking at, because she felt like she was just staring at leaves.

"Yeah, that's what we think," Matt nodded.

"This is all about a monkey?" Claire said, her jaw dropping in disbelief. They were stuck there because of a monkey? Really?

"Well–"

"Why has it taken–" Claire paused to glance at her watch, "–taken well over an hour to figure out it was just a monkey?"

"We're still a little confused," one of the guards who was sitting at the desk spoke up. "A monkey shouldn't be enough to have tripped the sensor." He reached for the keyboard in front of him and hit a command. "Watch this."

Claire returned her focus to the screen. The frozen image was now playing. It was short, barely a few seconds long, but it played on repeat a few times, and she was at least slightly more able to tell that she was looking at a monkey. It appeared on the tree limb looking in the direction of the camera, before suddenly turning around and scampering away, leaving some rustling leaves in its wake.

"The alarm goes off right before the monkey turns," the other guard who was sitting at the desk informed everyone. "We think it scared it."

"So it could've set it off, then," Claire said. "That would make sense."

"Maybe, but it shouldn't have. If that was enough to set off our sensors, then we should have them going off pretty much non-stop all day, every day," Matt said and Claire looked away from the screen and over to him. "There are lots of creatures around that size on the island. We see them on the camera feeds almost daily."

"Then what tripped it?" Claire asked. "What do the other camera feeds show from that area around the same time?"

The guard at the controls tapped in a few more commands, and the screen was suddenly divided into quarters, three of them showing different feeds.

"It's got to be from one of these three," the guard said, hitting play.

The same few seconds played on repeat again as everyone shifted their gaze from feed to feed. But, there was nothing noticeable in the two new ones.

"Can you back it up about five seconds," Owen asked, and Claire noticed his gaze was focused on the feed in the bottom left quadrant.

"Did you see something?"

"Not sure," Owen replied, leaning forward to examine the screen more closely as the video feeds started to play again. It took a few plays through, before Owen exclaimed, "There! Right there."

"What?" Matt asked, his brow furrowing as the feeds again froze.

"Back it up a few frames," Owen directed, and the guard did. "There, do you see it?" Owen asked, looking around excitedly. Everyone just looked at him blankly. He stepped up to the screen, reaching out and pointing to whatever it was that he was seeing.

Claire squinted again, trying to turn what just looked like a shadow to her into, well, _something_.

"The shadows?" Matt asked hesitantly, and Claire was glad he'd spoken up and it wasn't just her who was still feeling lost.

"Look at the shape of it," Owen said, before turning back to the guard at the controls. "Can you play it in slow motion? Watch carefully… don't you see it?"

"Is that a… person?" The guard at the controls was the first to speak up.

"Who would be out there?" the other guard asked. "Everyone's accounted for."

"It can't be a person," Matt shook his head. "It's probably just our minds playing tricks on us."

Claire watched the feed continue to play in a loop in slow motion. Now that someone had pointed out what they were apparently looking at, she could sort of see it. Sort of. But she didn't really want to admit that. But, if it _was_ a person, well, the implications of what she was (possibly) seeing were overwhelming. Not only was Sorna a private island, but it was remote. And as part of Las Cinco Muertes, Costa Ricans tended to avoid the whole area at all cost. It was hard to imagine that someone would be on the island by accident or without an agenda.

As she mulled over it all, her gaze drifted, taking in the other monitors in front of them. Some were showing status updates for the various systems on the island, like the fences and cameras, and others were rotating through the camera feeds. She was just skimming them over, not really absorbing what she was looking at, when something caught her eye and, frowning, she looked more closely at one feed, only for it to immediately flip to another.

"Can you pull up the cameras from the raptor paddock?" she asked, interrupting the bickering that everyone was currently having over whether or not the shadow really was a person.

"The what?" one guard asked, turning to look at her, confused.

"The current feeds from the raptor paddock," she repeated, a little impatient.

"Why? What's going on? What did you see?" Owen demanded.

Claire didn't answer him as the three videos they'd been watching on the main screen were replaced with the feeds from the paddock. But, she didn't need to, as everyone's attention was all drawn to one specific feed.

"What are they doing?" Matt asked.

"They must have spotted something," Owen replied absently.

All three raptors were gathered together at the fence, staring at something that had caught their attention. But they weren't gathered near one of the inner gates, where they might see one of the guards who were still out patrolling. No, they were gathered near the back fence.

The back fencing of their paddock was also part of the perimeter fencing. Because of the amount of area that had been sectioned off for the encampment, the main perimeter fencing was electrified and not a solid wall. At the back of the raptor paddock, they actually had two fences. The inner one, the one the raptors were up against, was pretty simple, just horizontal steel bars. It was mainly there to keep the raptors from accidentally brushing up against the electrified fence. Right now, at least, it seemed to be doing its job.

"Can we see what they're seeing?" Claire asked.

"Sur–" the guard at the controls started to reply. He was cut off when suddenly all the screens started flashing and the alarm started blasting across the encampment again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lot's more cliffhangers in this fic. :) But, hopefully that just makes you eager for next week. Anyone have any guesses what'll happen next?


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"Turn it off!" Owen demanded the moment he got over his initial shock, his gaze still locked on the raptors feed. All three of them were already starting to freak out again.

The guard at the controls jumped into action, quickly turning the alarm off. For a couple of moments the only sound in the control room was of everyone's harsh breathing. Owen could feel his own heart pounding and he couldn't stop himself from reaching for Claire, wanting the contact. He tried to keep it discreet, just brushing his hand against hers, not wanting to push her. But the moment he made contact she reached back, gripping his hand tightly.

"What tripped it this time?" Claire asked, her gaze still focused on the screen ahead of them. "Was it the same sensor? A different one?"

"Different one," the guard replied. "This time it was–"

"What?" Owen asked, when he noticed that the guard was now looking at him uneasily.

"–the one outside the raptor paddock," the guard finished.

Without waiting for further instructions, the guard pulled up the feeds he'd been about to switch to before, the ones giving a view outside of the perimeter fence. The ones that would show whatever the raptors had been looking at.

Almost immediately a series of gasps and variations of " _What the fuck?"_ rang out about the room. Owen could barely believe what he was seeing. There were two people approaching the raptor fence.

"What are they doing?" Matt asked. "Don't they realize this island is private and restricted?"

"Maybe they got lost?" the guard at the controls suggested hesitantly. When everyone turned to look at him, eyebrows raised, he just shrugged. "Not _everything's_ got a nefarious reason."

"I hope they realize the fence is electrified," the other guard commented.

"The one on the left doesn't look so good," Claire said, as she peered closely at the screen. She frowned. "Doesn't he look injured?"

Owen had been too stunned at the fact that there were people on the feed to react at once, but at Claire's question, he blinked a few times and focused on the men. She was right. The one on the left appeared to be being supported by the other.

"We need to get out there," Owen said. "I need to go see the raptors. And we're not going to get any answers just standing here."

At his comment about the raptors, everyone looked back to that feed. The raptors were focused on the two surprise visitors, but they were also shifting about. Owen could tell that while they were still a little worked up, their interest and curiosity in their new visitors was giving them a distraction to focus on. Blue and Echo were back up against the fence, while Charlie was standing a few steps back, having stationed herself between her sisters.

"Right," Matt agreed, already turning for the door. "Let's go."

Owen turned to follow Matt and then realized he was still holding Claire's hand. He went to let go, expecting — _wanting_ — her to stay behind, but the moment he glanced in her direction, he noted the firm set of her jaw. Sighing internally, he knew there was no point arguing. She'd be going too. Instead, he just gave a gentle tug and the two of them followed Matt out of the room.

The moment they stepped back outside Owen wasn't surprised when Claire dropped his hand. But he barely had half a second to dwell on that before he was distracted by the sounds coming from the raptor paddock. The three of them picked up their pace, heading across the field.

"What's going on?"

The shouted question came from Barry, who was trying to push his way past the guard and out of the cafeteria. Owen just waved for Barry to join them, and Matt quickly signaled to the guard that it was okay.

"What's up?" Barry repeated his question as he caught up with them. "What happened now?"

"There are … _people_ ," Owen replied, still not really believing what he had seen.

"People?" Barry echoed, incredulous.

"Outside the fence. Right by the raptors," Owen confirmed. "They set off the motion sensors this time. Maybe what set them off earlier, too."

"What are people doing here?" Barry asked. "Wait, not _our_ people, right?"

"No, not ours," Owen said.

As they neared the paddock, Owen looked briefly at the shed where the raptor's food and snacks were stored, and then at the stairs, torn between what he should do. While the raptors weren't sounding _mad_ exactly, he still felt like he needed to get up there. But without any treats for them, he knew it'd be difficult to distract them from their new focus.

"I'll grab some rats," Barry said, veering away from the group. "I'll meet you up there."

Thankful that his friend seemed to get his dilemma, Owen focused on the stairs, Matt and Claire trailing after him as he took them two at a time. They hurried along the catwalk towards the back part of the paddock. As they circled their way around, Owen realized he could see Cam ahead. Cam was faced away from them, looking outside the perimeter fencing and he appeared to be talking with the people they'd seen, based on the way he was standing and gesturing.

"Well?" Matt called out as they approached, and Owen realized for the first time that Matt was clutching his radio. Owen had been distracted by Barry and he hadn't noticed that Matt had been radioing with Cam on their way over.

"They need some help," Cam offered up, turning his attention to them.

Owen meant to pay attention to what Cam had to share, but as he looked down into the paddock to check on the raptors he got distracted. They were still in the same positioning as he'd seen on the feed, with Charlie a couple of steps back from her sisters. He pulled out his ever-present clicker from his pocket and clicked it a couple of times, trying to get their attention. While Charlie glanced up at him hesitantly, Blue and Echo continued to stare at their unexpected visitors, their lips pulled back and their teeth bared as they snarled.

He tried the clicker again, before capitulating and whistling down to the raptors. That, at least, got all of their attention, Blue and Echo sparing a glance in his direction. However, seeing that he didn't (yet) have any food to bribe them with, he was unable to hold their attention for long.

Deciding that the raptors seemed mostly okay, Owen looked away from them, turning his attention back to where Cam, Claire and Matt had now gathered. He joined the group, finally getting a chance to see the new visitors for himself.

The two men were a few feet back from the fence. From this close, it was clear that one of them was injured, and he was sitting on the ground, groaning and clutching at his arm. Owen could see that shirts or rags or something had been hastily tied around both the guy's arm and his leg as makeshift bandages. However, the one on his leg wasn't completely covering the wound, and his khaki pants were dark with blood. The injured man's gaze was focused through the fence at the raptors, while the other was looking up at them standing on the catwalk.

Claire, Matt and Cam were having a hushed conversation, their gazes occasionally flickering down to the men. Owen moved closer to them so he could hear what was being said.

"Who's the medic on duty this week?" Claire asked. "We need to get them out here. Or Zia. Someone, _anyone_ , who can help."

"Yeah, but how're we going to help them when they're on the other side of the fence?" Cam asked. "Throw them bandages?"

"We need to get them inside," Matt agreed. "But where? There's no entry points."

At that, all four of them looked back at the perimeter fencing. Owen had walked (and run) the whole perimeter of the encampment more times than he could count (or wanted to think about) and he knew that there were no gates along it. Nothing that led out to the rest of the island, anyway. Except… his gaze came to a rest on a section of the fence not far from where they were standing.

"There's one spot, actually" Owen said, raising his hand and pointing.

A year ago when Hoskins had been insisting on a "real" field test for the raptors, they'd had to modify the raptor paddock and had created a second small double-gated entry, but this one led from the paddock out to the rest of the island. "Of course, it creates a new issue in that it would lead them directly into the raptors' paddock."

Before anyone could say anything, the sound of boots on the grating behind them had them looking back to see Barry approaching them, clutching a metal bucket of raptor treats.

"Do you think you could get the raptors to stay away?" Claire asked, her gaze jumping between Owen and Barry and then down to the raptors. "What if you moved them into the other area?"

"I think we'll be hard pressed to drag them away with everything going on," Owen said. "They're way too interested in all of this. But, moving them to the other part of the paddock wouldn't be enough. I'd have to convince them to get into their harnesses. That'd be the only way to keep them secure and allow us to enter the paddocks."

"We could tranq them," Cam suggested.

"We could," Owen agreed, "But I'd prefer not to."

"Please, can you help us?" the man shouted up, interrupting their discussion. Owen watched as the man looked behind into the jungle for a moment, before looking up again. "Please."

"What's going on?" Barry asked, joining the group. "What's the plan?"

Owen had to hide his snicker when he saw Claire immediately shift farther away from the bucket Barry was holding. He knew she didn't like being near the rats, even if they were dead.

"Trying to figure out how we can get them in," Owen filled Barry in. "We're thinking of using the raptor's gate, but we're not sure how to get them through the raptor paddock. The girls are too interested. And I'm sure the fact that one guy's bleeding isn't helping." As he said that, Owen was mentally kicking himself for not making the connection between the raptors interest and the guy's injury earlier.

"Why do they need to go through the paddock?" Barry asked, handing over the bucket when Owen reached for it. Owen was even more eager to distract the raptors now, as he didn't want them focused on the scent of human blood.

"How else are we going to get them inside?" he asked, forgoing his clicker this time and just whistling down to the raptors. "Eyes up, girls. Girls!" He pulled out a rat and dangled it for them to see. He almost wanted to laugh, the raptors internal debate over whether or not the rat was worth giving up their attention clear to see. "C'mon, Blue. You know you want this. Echo! Echo, eyes up here! Good, Charlie, good."

Once Owen started to toss the rats to the raptors, Barry finally answered him.

"You're overthinking it," Barry told them. "The guys only need to go through the first gate, they don't need to actually get into the paddock. We haven't even used these gates since the field test, so why not just tear a hole in it? As long as we keep the gate from the raptor's area closed, and only open the outside gate — which we can close after the guys come through — it should be fine. We can rebuild the fence afterwards. Or maybe it would make more sense to put a more permanent gate in. It'd probably actually be a good idea to have some sort of exit that we can access."

As Barry talked, Owen gave the raptors a second round of treats, before trying to dismiss them. To his disappointment (but not his surprise), Blue and Echo instead returned to the fence, staring back at the visitors. Charlie, however, seemed less interested in the visitors now, and instead of taking up her old position, she wandered off a little ways. Not far, though, and Owen noted that she seemed to be favouring her leg as she walked. He'd definitely need to have Zia take a look at her.

"That could work," Matt was saying when Owen finally returned his attention to the group. "But before we do that, I want a couple more guys up here with tranq guns."

"What? Why?" Owen started to protest.

"Just in case," Matt reassured him. "Better we're ready in case we need them, than scrambling. And it doesn't look like they're going to leave us alone if we do this."

Owen looked back down into the paddock. Blue and Echo were still staring out the fence, but he now noted that Charlie had her gaze focused up at the catwalk, watching the rest of them.

He sighed. "Yeah, you're right."

o-o-o

She felt useless. And Claire _hated_ feeling useless. But, she had no medical training, no skills at handling the raptors, and no one seemed interested in handing her a tool to help tear a hole into the fencing.

And so, she was stuck standing back to just watch.

Everyone else was rushing around, focused on their task at hand.

Owen and Barry were up on the catwalk with more treats, trying to lure the raptors away from the fence (or, at least, keep them calm). Zia had recently joined them and was doing her best to evaluate Charlie's limp and whether they needed to do anything about it.

Most of the ACU team on the island were all gathered at the raptor paddock as well. Some were up on the catwalk, ready with tranqs in case they were needed while others were working on figuring out how to make a hole in the fence. It had seemed like an easy and obvious solution when Barry had first mentioned it, but they hadn't taken into account that the fences had been designed to contain the raptors. It was turning out to be harder than they'd expected, although, she noted, still easier than trying to convince the raptors to let the men in through their paddock. Besides, they seemed to be finally making progress now.

Even the medic, Jamal Burrow, was busy, despite still not having access to his patient. They had debated (briefly) whether to move the two men in through the perimeter fence gate while they tried to make the hole. However, when it turned out to be a bigger job than they'd expected, they'd decided to keep the men on the outside, just so they wouldn't end up injuring them by accident (and it also kept them a bit farther away from the raptors).

The decision, however, was making it more difficult for Jamal, as he couldn't just hand supplies through (what with the perimeter fencing being electrified). In the end, Claire had had to turn away to cover her laugh as Jamal and a couple of others had worked to toss a few packages of bandages and pain pills through the fence while staying well back.

They now had names for the two men — Mike and Keith — but they still didn't have any idea why they were on Sorna. And while Claire wanted to press, to ask for more information, it didn't feel appropriate, not now. Not as they had started to get a better idea of just how injured Keith was, and how important it was that they moved quickly.

So, while Claire stood off to the side, somewhat fuming over not being able to do anything useful, she occupied herself with trying to come up with what could be a reasonable explanation for the men's appearance on the island.

She wasn't having much luck.

There was only one that she considered _somewhat_ reasonable — that they were adventurers who had heard the rumours about Las Cinco Muertes and that it had formally played host to dinosaurs and had bribed someone from Costa Rica to take them out there. There was really nothing special to the collection of five islands _except_ their tie to Jurassic World (and, Claire supposed, the folklore that the Costa Ricans had). The islands didn't boast particularly impressive geographic features that people would want to hike and see. And there weren't any known animals or birds that were exclusive to the islands — unless you considered the potential of dinosaurs.

But even that possible explanation — that they were there based on rumours — didn't seem likely. There was just a _vibe_ she was getting from them. Something that didn't scream thrill seeker. She also knew that the control room had cameras that focused out to sea around the docks. It wasn't impossible to avoid them, but it would've made the journey take a lot of extra time and required them going well out of their way in order to avoid being noticed. And since no one was supposed to know that Sorna was being used by Jurassic World, they shouldn't have felt any need to try to avoid a specific area around the islands

And there was definitely no way they'd arrived by helicopter. That would've been _way_ too obvious and there was no chance that the control room would have missed that.

Which meant… which meant that if they weren't there for an innocent reason, there had to be something else at play. Just… Claire couldn't figure out _what_ that would be. After all, they were on the wrong side of the perimeter fence if they were wanting to try to steal dinosaurs. But it wasn't even just that. While they had willingly exposed themselves once Keith was injured, if Owen was right, if what he'd seen on the camera feeds from when the motion sensors had been _first_ tripped, they had been skulking around the area for a while.

Of course, that led Claire to once again question their explanation for how Keith had become injured. Mike had told them that Keith had fallen as they were climbing down a cliff and had been gashed by some rocks. From Claire's, admittedly rudimentary, understanding of the geography of Sorna there wasn't a cliff anywhere nearby. So if they had been the ones who had initially tripped the motion sensor, did that mean they had come near the fencing and then ventured far enough away to fall off a cliff, and then decided to come back? It didn't seem likely.

She was hoping that once they got them in, that once Jamal could look at the wounds, they'd have a better idea as to what may have _really_ happened. But… she wasn't really sure how even having that information would help.

Claire also wasn't even sure what they were supposed to do once they got Mike and Keith through. The easy part, of course, was to help treat Keith's injuries. But, regardless as to _why_ they were on the island, they were trespassing on private property. Of course, who to take that too, she wasn't sure. There wasn't much that Jurassic World could do, except require them to leave. And maybe ban them from ever visiting Jurassic World again. Not that that seemed like a punishment that would phase either of the men. Maybe they should be phoning the coast guard? Except they were on the island, not on a boat. Maybe the Costa Rician police, then? Or the government?

Her thoughts were interrupted when Matt came to stand beside her. "Once they're through, Jamal's going to take a look, but he's already pretty sure we aren't equipped to deal with Keith's injury. I want to use the helicopter and send them to Nublar."

"Not San Jose?" Claire asked, surprised. She returned her attention to the fence to find that there was an obvious hole in it now, and that the crew was just working on widening it enough for a person to be able to climb through.

"I'm worried about the storm," Matt admitted, turning around to look behind them to the east. Claire followed his gaze and saw that the storm clouds she'd spotted earlier were much closer and appeared to be moving swiftly. "As it is, I think it's going to be a tight timeline to even get them to Nublar before it hits."

"Hmm," Claire hummed her agreement, her thoughts whirling. If they rushed Mike and Keith off island, she wasn't going to get much of a chance to find out anything new.

"Okay, I think we can let them in now," one of the guards interrupted them.

Claire watched as Matt immediately lifted up his radio, passing on the message. She knew they'd already coordinated how they'd do this. Barry and Owen would continue to try to distract the raptors from the catwalk while those on the ground would quickly get Keith and Mike through the hole, and then out of sight of the raptors.

The actual process, now that they were ready, took only a few minutes. Using the radios, a guard at the controls for the gates unlocked the perimeter one. Mike had managed to get Keith back up on his feet again, and they were ready the moment it opened. Jamal and another guard had already gone through the hole and they took Keith from Mike and quickly brought him back out to the main area, while the perimeter gate was locked again.

Claire followed behind the group as they moved away from the paddock. Once they were sure they were out of sight of the raptors, those supporting Keith lowered him to a stretcher that was lying on the ground. While Claire hadn't been able to see the raptors during the process, there had been increased noise from them, although it had sounded to her more like they were chittering than shrieking or snarling, so she was pretty sure they were okay, just voicing their interest.

Once Keith was on the ground, Jamal immediately got to work, finally getting a chance to get a good look at his injuries. When Jamal had first come out, he'd brought out a large field medicine kit. Now, he quickly dug through it again, pulling out more bandages and other supplies. Claire watched as his frown deepened as he started to work, swapping out the blood-soaked bandages for fresh ones, before hooking up a portable IV. It didn't take long before he looked up at her and Matt.

"We definitely need to get him to Nublar. Ideally, we'd take him all the way to San Jose but…" Just like Matt had earlier, Jamal's gaze drifted towards the storm, which was even closer now.

"Yeah," Matt agreed, pulling out his radio. "Let's get him to the helicopter. I'll get the pilot to meet us there." Matt turned to Claire. "With the storm, it's unlikely the helicopter will be able to come back tonight. You should go get your guests."

Claire felt her eyes widen momentarily, before she managed to school her expression. Whoops, she'd totally forgotten about Frank, Tom and Helen. "Yes, of course. I'll get them."

She immediately started back towards the cafeteria mentally beating herself up. Oops, what a great host she was. When she'd first left them, they'd been with Barry, and she had assumed that she'd be back to collect them shortly.

Hiding her grimace, she forced out a cheerful smile as she entered the building. She knew they were going to have so many questions, and she really didn't have anything much that she could or wanted to tell them. But, at the same time, she couldn't really hide it either, considering they were going to be on the helicopter with Keith.

The moment she entered the dining area, the three investors looked up.

"What's going on?" Tom demanded.

"We were supposed to leave over an hour ago," Helen added. "Is everything okay?"

"There was an incident," Claire told them, approaching their table. She felt more than saw the few other people in the area sit up and pay attention to what she was saying, but she didn't care. They'd all end up hearing a more detailed (and accurate) version later, anyway. "There were a couple of unexpected people on the island who have asked us for assistance. One of them was injured in a fall. It's taken some time to be able to safely bring them in."

Claire could tell the investors wanted to interrupt, to ask for more details, but she quickly moved forward. She didn't want them to ask any questions she couldn't (or didn't want to) answer. "Keith is not in great shape and Sorna is not equipped to deal with serious injuries. So we're going to use the helicopter to take him over to Nublar. However, there's also a storm approaching, which means it's unlikely the helicopter will be able to return tonight."

"We're _stuck_ here?" Frank looked almost ready to hyperventilate over the news.

"No," Claire shook her head, reassuring him quickly. "There's enough room on the helicopter for all of you. But we need to get moving. We want to make sure it beats the storm."

"Is it _safe_?" Helen asked, her tone quivering even as she pushed away from the table, standing up. "If the storm is almost here, should the helicopter fly? _Can it_?"

"Perfectly safe," Claire promised them, ushering them towards the door. "We just prefer not to fly during storms if we can help it. The only reason it wouldn't come back tonight is that us being stuck on Sorna would not constitute enough of an emergency to send it, that's all. But, like I said, there's enough space, so it's not even a concern."

As they exited the building, Claire could see a group gathering around the helicopter. Claire, Helen, Frank and Tom hurried across the field towards it. The pilot was already seated inside, going through his preflight checklist, and Keith and Mike and Jamal were also on board.

"Good, you're here," Matt said, noticing their arrival. "Should be ready to leave in just a couple of minutes. Go ahead and climb aboard."

Claire watched as the three investors did so, before she turned and scanned the area. She had been hoping to see Owen before she left. Just as she was about to give up and climb on herself, she finally saw him rushing across the field towards her.

"I just need a minute," she told Matt. She didn't wait for him to reply, as she headed towards Owen, meeting him halfway.

"You heading out?" Owen asked, gesturing to the helicopter.

"With the storm coming, the only chance is to go now," she nodded. "How are the raptors? How's Charlie?"

"They're fine," Owen replied distractedly, continuing with her back towards the helicopter. "What I'm more curious about is who are these guys? What were they doing on Sorna? Something's not right, Claire." She watched as his gaze searched the group around the helicopter, his voice dropping so only she could hear (not that he needed to do that, what with the helicopter blades starting up and drowning out most sounds). "Where's the uninjured one? What has he had to say for himself?"

"He's in the helicopter." Claire pointed.

Owen's jaw almost dropped open at that. "You're letting him leave?" He stopped moving, turning towards her and grabbing her arms lightly, stopping her as well. "If there's something going on… we need to question him. You can't just let him leave."

"He's not supposed to be here," Claire reminded Owen. "And it's not like he's just going to walk free. The helicopter is going to Nublar. They're better equipped to deal with something like this."

Owen took a deep breath as he looked over at the helicopter before frowning and then finally conceding. "I suppose so." He turned back to her. "Maybe you can question him on the flight."

"I–" Claire started to protest, but cut herself off.

As much as she hated to admit it, she also thought that there was more to the story as to why Mike and Keith were on the island. And she knew that Owen was right that they needed to question them more. But, another thought had just hit her — just because they were getting the two men off the island, it didn't mean that whatever they were up to was over. After all, she still hadn't figured out how they'd even got to the island. What if they hadn't come alone?

Before she could fully sort out her new thoughts, Matt joined the two. "We really need to get the helicopter airborne. Claire, are you ready?"

"No, but you should tell them to go," she found herself replying.

"What?" Owen was clearly surprised by her decision, if his almost yelped question was any indicator.

"You do realize that means you're stuck here for the night?" Matt asked her.

"Yeah, I know," Claire nodded. "But something's going on and I want to stay to find out what."

"No, you should go," Owen implored. "The best way to find out is to ask Mike some questions. You can do that from Nublar. We can keep you informed. You don't need to stay."

" _Hey, Matt?_ "

They were interrupted by Matt's radio crackling to life. He pulled it out. "Yeah?"

" _There's some sort of boat approaching the island. What do you want us to do?_ "

For a moment the three of them stared at the radio in stunned silence. A boat? What now?

Finally, Claire found her voice and stated, her tone firm, "I'm staying."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many cliffhangers in this story. :P Sorry (although not really).
> 
> I'm currently working on the chapter 9 and the end of this story/trilogy. I'm torn between feeling a bit sad to see it come to an end, but also looking forward to having it all wrapped up. This mini JW universe has been a lot of fun to "play" in.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'll see you back here next week. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Are you sure Charlie's okay?" Claire asked as she stood on the catwalk staring down at the three raptors below. Even with no training, she could easily see Charlie's limp. It looked much more pronounced now than after the first alarm had gone off.

"She's fine," Owen replied with a hint of exasperation in his voice and Claire knew he was probably rolling his eyes at her. She _may_ have asked the question a few times already.

"She is," Zia chimed in. "She's not acting any differently and it doesn't appear to be hindering her movement. I'll keep an eye on her, but my guess is it'll fade away over the next day or so."

Claire nodded as she continued to watch the raptors. They weren't doing much, just milling about below. Occasionally, one of them would look up at the catwalk, as if to check what she, Owen, Barry and Zia were doing. Claire sort of thought the raptors were confused about what was going on. Not only had there been all the excitement around their paddock only thirty minutes ago (where they'd been given more treats in a single session than they had ever received before), but now, except for Claire, no one on the catwalk was paying them any attention.

"I'm really not sure what you think we're going to be able to see from up here," Barry commented from behind her. "If there's some random large animal out there, and that's a big _if_ , why would it decide to come and show itself _now_?"

Giving one last look down at the raptors, Claire finally turned away from them and took the two steps across the width of the catwalk to join the others. She wasn't that surprised when Owen's arm slipped around her as he rested his hand on the small of her back. She was grateful that with their current company she didn't feel a need to pull away for the sake of social protocols, and instead she actually moved over a bit closer to him.

"Matt said that Jamal didn't think the injury could be from a fall," Owen repeated. "That Jamal thought it looked like it was from an animal attack."

"Yeah, but… do you really think it was a puma?" Barry asked skeptically.

"Unlikely," Zia jumped in. "Pumas rarely attack humans unless threatened. And while I wouldn't necessarily put it past those two guys to have done that… it still doesn't seem likely. There would be no point of coming all the way to Sorna to try to get into a fight with a puma."

"I'm less interested in _how_ the guy was injured," Claire said, "than _why_ they were here. I can't come up with any reason that makes any sense _except_ for something to do with, well, _here_." She gestured to the area around them. "But they shouldn't have known about this. _No one_ is supposed to really know about this."

"But rumours about Site B have been around for years," Owen reminded her. "And if you add in that Costa Ricans have always tended to avoid these islands — which only got worse after the San Diego incident — it does make them sort of a magnet for thrill-seekers."

"Okay, fine, let's pretend they fell for the Site B rumours and decided to come check out the island and see if they could 'bag a dinosaur,' " Claire said. "Do any of you really think they looked at all prepared to do that?"

"Well, no," Owen admitted as Barry shook his head.

While Mike and Keith had both been carrying backpacks, they had been more of the daypack style, not ready for an overnight adventure. But, to Claire, it was actually the fact that Mike and Keith didn't appear to have brought either a fancy camera or any sort of rifles that was even more confusing. There had been nothing on them that would indicate they'd been prepared to either defend themselves from a dinosaur or to document their adventure.

"The thing I keep coming back to, is _how_ did they get onto the island," Claire asked, turning her focus to the other three. "If they came out here because of rumours and didn't know about our current operation, well, it seems to me that the route you'd take to the island would be a pretty straight line. After all, who are you trying to avoid? You'd want to take the shortest path. But if they'd done that, we should've spotted them. The same way that guard spotted whatever boat is out there now. The fact that we _didn't_ see them arrive… What does that mean? Did they show up during the night without lights? Or did they approach the island from the south or north, which would've required a very indirect route? _Why_ didn't we see them?"

As she finished, she looked imploringly at the three of them, wanting, _hoping_ , that one of them would have an answer. Claire really didn't want them to confirm her fears. She _wanted_ this to turn out to be something simple. Something they could easily move on from. Something that they would all just laugh about tomorrow. Could one of them just please tell her that she was wrong?

None of them did.

Mind you, none of them said anything at all, all three just turning to look back out over Sorna, and Claire sighed, her shoulders drooping. She felt Owen pat her back gently, before he pulled her into his side. She leaned against him, taking the moment of comfort.

It was Barry who broke the silence a couple of minutes later. "I still don't think it was a puma."

o-o-o

Owen had been so lost in his own thoughts that if it wasn't for Claire suddenly pulling away from his side, he would've missed that there was someone walking along the catwalk towards them. He dragged his gaze away from the jungle he'd only been sort of observing and turned around to see Cam approaching them.

"Ms. Dearing? Owen? Matt was hoping he could talk to you both," Cam said as he came to a stop a few feet away.

"What about?" Claire asked, her brow furrowed in thought for a moment. "The boat?"

"I think so," Cam nodded. "But he didn't say. Just asked me to get you both."

"Sure," Claire agreed, before she glanced over at Owen, as if remembering that he might have a different answer.

Hiding his smirk, Owen just nodded his own agreement. "Where is he?"

"Down at the docks," Cam replied, pointing in the general direction, even though they all knew where the docks were.

As Owen started along the catwalk with Claire at his side, he wasn't all that surprised when he heard both Barry and Zia following after them.

"I should probably check on the babies," Zia commented. "It's almost time for their afternoon meal."

"I should–" Barry started, but he was interrupted as the first drops of rain started to fall. Immediately the five of them all looked skyward. "I should get inside," Barry finished.

They all quickened their pace along the catwalk, only diverging once they'd descended the stairs. Barry and Zia both immediately cut across the field towards the buildings while Owen and Claire turned and headed for the docks and Cam remained behind at the paddock.

"I should've brought a coat," Claire grumbled as more drops of rain continued to land on them.

"Hopefully Matt will be quick," Owen said, contemplating his own outfit. Of course, he was luckier than she was, in that he had a whole closet of clothes to change into should he end up soaked. So far, thankfully, it was mostly just spitting at them.

Nevertheless, the two of them picked up their pace, eager to get the meeting over with so they could get inside. As they neared the docks, Owen could see that the boat in question had turned out to be a luxury yacht. While it was pulled up to the docks, it appeared that whoever was on it was still _on_ the boat given that a couple of the guards were positioned on the dock beside it.

Matt, however, had seen them coming and was walking across the dock towards them.

"So, who are they?" Owen asked Matt once he reached them. "Do they have anything to do with the other guys?"

"I don't think so," Matt said as he glanced back towards the yacht. "They're a middle-aged couple who are heading up the coast to California. Said they started over in Boston a few weeks back. Sailed down the east coast and went through the Panama canal about a week ago."

"Shouldn't they be past us by now?" Owen said, trying to do the mental math as to how far away the canal was and how long it'd take the yacht to cover the distance.

"Sightseeing trip, so they're in no hurry," Matt replied with a shrug. "Been making a lot of stops along the way, supposedly."

"Sorna's a bit out of the way for sightseeing, isn't it? I'd've thought they be sticking closer to the mainland."

"We're not _too_ far off," Matt said. "But, it sounds like they've heard rumours about the island chain and thought they'd venture by, see what's up. From the safety of their boat, or so they're claiming." He rolled his eyes.

Owen chuckled at that. That's what they all said.

"So why did you want to see us?" Claire interrupted before Owen could ask another question. "If they're just sightseers, why are they docked?"

Matt gave a quick glance over his shoulder at the boat again before answering. "They said they got nervous because of the storm. Said they were going to try for Nublar, but then they noticed the dock and thought it would probably be safer to pull in here to ride out the storm than attempt to reach Nublar."

"Oh," Claire replied and Owen looked over to see that she was frowning as she stared at the yacht. "I guess that makes sense. But… I still don't know what that has to do with me."

"Well…" Matt started before trailing off and Owen was surprised to see that he looked a little sheepish. "I'm not actually sure what to do. If I should let them stay here or if I should be making them leave. We haven't had any unauthorized visitors like this before."

Owen coughed, trying to cover his laugh at that.

"Okay, besides Keith and Mike," Matt conceded.

"Don't forget the robbery last year," Owen added.

"Right, but that was different, too," Matt said.

Owen hid a snicker when he noticed that Matt was now focusing on Claire, clearly no longer as interested in Owen's opinion on the matter. But, Owen still wasn't really sure why _he_ had been asked there along with Claire anyway. He could understand Matt deferring to Claire as to what to do in the given situation, but Owen didn't have any more right to make that call than Matt did. In fact, Owen was pretty sure that _Matt_ had more say over what they should do than Owen did.

"I know protocol requires me to send them on their way, but the updates we're getting on the storm say it'll probably be pretty rough. Not a hurricane, thankfully, but still quite windy and I can understand them not wanting to be stuck out in the middle of it, not when we've got a dock right here," Matt continued. "But, at the same time, they're not authorized to be on this island. And because we _did_ have that incident last fall, as much as they seem like regular people…" He trailed off and gave another shrug.

That, at least, was a sentiment that Owen could relate to. While Matt was right that Sorna wasn't _way_ out of the way, and that there had been rumours flying around about the island for a couple of decades now, it still seemed like an odd choice for a sightseeing stop. Especially if the couple was worried about the storm. Shouldn't the idea of visiting an island with potentially wild dinosaurs be even scarier?

"Hard to know people's intentions these days," Claire agreed with Matt. "But, saying that, we also don't want to make things more dangerous for them. Especially since we'd probably be the first called on to respond if they ended up having issues. And it doesn't seem likely that they'd be able to make it to Nublar before the storm fully hits."

"Right," Matt agreed. "So, I was thinking of letting them stay docked for the night with the condition that they have to stay on their boat. I can even keep a couple of guys stationed down here to make sure that happens."

"That sounds reasonable," Claire concurred. "And yeah, let's definitely keep a couple of people on watch."

Owen was surprised when Matt then turned to him and asked, "Do you agree?"

"Um, sure?" Owen replied, giving a side look to Claire to see if she was as surprised by the question as he was. However, she was focused back on the boat and not paying him any attention.

"Okay, good," Matt said as he glanced up at the sky. The wind had started to noticeably pick up, and the rain had gotten worse. "If we're lucky, this will blow over pretty quickly."

"I hope so," Owen said. While it wasn't pouring yet, the rain was now falling steadily and he could feel his sleeves starting to stick to him. He was thankful for the extra protection his leather vest gave him.

"Have you heard anything else from Jamal?" Claire asked. "Or, wait, they probably haven't made it to Nublar yet, have they?"

"They should be landing in about 10 minutes," Matt confirmed after a quick glance at his watch. "I asked Jamal to update me as soon as he gets there and has handed Keith off to the medics. And I've also radioed ahead. So, not only will a med team meet the helicopter, but so will security, and they know to keep an eye on both Keith and Mike. Mike won't be free to just wander about."

"Good," Claire nodded, seemingly satisfied with the plan. "Let me know as soon as you hear from him, please. I just–"

"Think something's a bit off with their story?" Matt asked when Claire cut off and she nodded. "Yeah," Matt sighed, "Me too. I could almost dismiss their appearance as them just being adventurous and meaning to explore the island, but Jamal's comments that the wound looked to be from an animal attack? Well, why lie about that?"

"They were oddly underprepared if they were really here to just explore the island," Owen added. "And I do mean oddly, because they _looked_ like they should know better. Not like two random city people trying their hand at hiking. Where were the rest of their supplies?"

"And how did they get here?" Claire asked. "That still bugs me the most." She turned her focus to Matt. "You haven't spotted any other boats around the island the last few days, have you?"

"No." Matt shook his head. "It's been quiet. Only our regular ferry-slash-supply boat. And no helicopters either. Well, not until today and you came over. How they got here has been bugging me too. I have Rick scanning over the security footage to see if we could've missed something."

Owen looked over at the yacht. He still couldn't see the couple, but considering the rain, he assumed they were probably tucked away inside. "It's odd timing for this boat to show up. Right after those guys…"

"It is," Matt agreed. "And if it wasn't for the storm I'd send them on their way. But, like I said, I'll keep a couple of guys down here to keep watch."

Owen nodded, before glancing down at his watch, surprised to see how late in the day it already was. The events of the afternoon had taken up more time than he'd expected, and now that he was actually noting the time, he was realizing just how much his whole schedule had been thrown off. And he knew that if _he_ was feeling a bit out of sorts over everything, that Claire had to be internally screaming. Of course, he also knew that as much as she loved control, that she thrived in scenarios like this. That getting to force control onto chaos was where she excelled.

But, with the helicopter and the two guys now gone, and with the boat's appearance being seemingly harmless, the emergency feeling of the afternoon was dissipating. It no longer really made sense for him to continue to just stand out there when he had actual work he could be doing. He might as well try to salvage the little part of his day that was left.

"If you don't need me," Owen directed his comment at both Matt and Claire, "I should get back to the nursery and try to get in at least part of my training session with Grape and Olive."

"Sure," Matt said. "I'm just going to go fill the guys in here on the new plan and then I'm going to head back to the control room to check on Rick's progress."

"I'll come with you," Claire told Owen, "I've got some questions for Zia." She stopped Matt before he could leave. "Matt, when you hear from Jamal, let me know."

"Will do," Matt agreed.

As Matt headed back out across the dock, Claire turned back to Owen, grinning. "So, what trick will Grape and Olive be learning today?"

Owen tried not to take the bait. And he _knew_ that it was bait. But– "I'm not teaching them _tricks_."

When Claire started laughing, he just hung his head for a moment, before chuckling along with her. He could actually feel some of the tension he hadn't realized had seeped into him over the afternoon finally dispersing, and he reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together as they started to walk back towards the buildings.

"Every time," he sighed, shaking his head. "I can't believe I fall for that _every time_."

o-o-o

Claire was watching as Owen worked with Olive and Grape when Matt finally came by with an update. She hadn't actually expected to see him — she'd thought Matt would probably just send someone else, so his appearance immediately set her on edge.

"You heard from Jamal?" she asked and Matt nodded.

She watched as he gave her a curious up-and-down look, and she couldn't help but stiffen her posture. By the time she and Owen had made it back to the buildings from the docks, it had started to pour. And although they'd run part of the way, Claire's thin blouse had ended up pretty wet and she'd been starting to shiver. Instead of heading straight for the nursery, Owen had led her into his office, grabbing a sweatshirt off the back of his chair and handing it to her. While the sleeves of his shirt were wet, he had been mostly protected by his leather vest, and so he'd just shrugged aside her concerns, saying he was good for now. And Zia hadn't even looked twice at Claire's outfit when they showed up at the nursery. In the time since, Claire had forgotten she was still wearing Owen's sweatshirt. But Matt's look had her suddenly feeling self conscious.

However, he didn't comment and his gaze almost immediately shifted past her, and she knew he was looking through the chain link fence at Owen and the raptors. For a moment, she thought he was going to usher her out of the room, that he wanted to talk to just her (and she was about to jump in to defend that Owen could hear whatever he had to say, too), but Matt just kept his gaze focused behind her.

Claire turned so she could see what Matt was looking at, and realized that he was waiting for Owen to finish up his current drill. Owen was kneeling on the ground so he was closer to the raptors height. Olive and Grape were crouched down as they faced him, staring up at the treats that Owen was dangling. Each time one of the raptors would move towards him, he'd admonish them with a light tap on their snout.

"Hold… That's good, Olive. C'mon, Grape, just a few more seconds. Hold… Whoa, back up there, Grape." Owen reached out and gently pushed Grape back a step, and Claire chuckled as Olive snapped at her sister, seemingly also displeased.

"This would go faster if you just stayed where you are," Owen reminded the two raptors. "Let's try this again. Counting back from five."

Claire listened as he slowly counted down, this time the raptors managing to stay in their spots (barely) before Owen gave a final click of his clicker and then tossed them each a treat. "Great job, Olive," he praised the raptor, who rushed forward, nudging at his hand and Owen gave her a couple of pats on the head. Grape squawked, looking indigent over her lack of praise, as she followed after her sister, staring beseechingly up at Owen. "Good work, Grape. You're getting there." He gave her a pat.

Standing up, Owen clicked the clicker again. "That's all for today, girls."

Both raptors chirped at him, following as he made his way back to the door in the fence. "Nope, you gotta stay in here," he told them as he unlocked the door. He didn't pull it open, instead finally acknowledging Matt's presence with a nod and then a warning to them both "Just a heads up that they always try to follow me out. Don't panic if they get out, just don't open the other door."

Claire couldn't help but back up a step at Owen's words. Matt, on the other hand, stepped forward. While she hated feeling "girly" in moments like this, in her defense, she was wearing thin dress pants that would provide zero protection against raptor teeth or claws. Both Matt and Owen were much better dressed to deal with a stray claw. Although, considering the incident with Fern the previous year, Claire actually wasn't all that convinced that Owen really had enough protective gear on to be in the cage with the raptors. That was a conversation that they'd had earlier, and that Owen had won, mostly because he'd just entered the cage before she could stop him.

Owen got the attention of the two raptors by dangling a couple more treats before tossing them to the far side of their cage. As soon as the raptors chased after them, he opened the door and attempted to slip through. However, Grape had turned around partway through her rush for her treat, deciding that she was more interested in escaping, and as Owen was pulling the door shut, she managed to get her head in the way. Chuckling, Owen bent down to gently shove her back inside before finally getting the door shut and quickly securing it.

Grape was immediately at the fence, chirping plaintively, her claws clutching at it. Owen just shook his head, stepping away from her and turning to face Claire and Matt.

"How are you able to resist that?" Claire asked, her own gaze still stuck on Grape.

"Because she does it every single time," Owen said simply. "And if I gave into her, I'd just be encouraging her to do it more. And probably convincing Olive it was worth trying." He gestured towards the exit from the room. "She's just going to keep whining if we stay in here. Better to go somewhere else. I'm guessing you've got news." He said the last bit to Matt and Claire was suddenly reminded about the questions she had around Jamal.

The two of them followed Owen out of the room, waiting as he stopped at a side room to drop off the supplies he'd grabbed earlier for his training (and to wash his hands). But, the moment he was done, Matt started talking.

"I talked with Jamal. The doctors think they should be able to handle Keith's injuries on Nublar. Said that while the cuts are big, they aren't particularly deep, so stitches and some fluids will probably be enough. Either way, I think the plan is still to send Keith and Mike to San Jose tomorrow, just for follow up, and because they aren't Jurassic World employees or guests."

"That's good news," Claire said, although she was a little surprised Matt had sought them out just to tell them that.

"That's not all," Matt added. "Jamal waited to call, because he wanted to get a chance to talk to the doctors there, to see what they thought of the wounds."

"And?" Owen pressed, when Matt paused.

"Dr. Graham told him that it kind of reminded him of when Fern attacked you," Matt replied, his gaze dropping to Owen's arm. Claire could barely suppress the shudder than ran through her at the memory, as she also looked down at Owen's arm. "Except," Matt continued, and Claire looked back at him, just in time to see him wince. "Except, he said that it looked like it was done by something bigger, much bigger."

It took Claire a moment to process his words.

"Are you suggesting that there's an animal on this island that has sharp claws that is bigger than Olive or Grape?" she asked hesitantly.

"I'm relaying what Jamal told me," Matt corrected her.

"Are there any known animals on these islands that also have claws? I mean, if Dr. Graham is thinking that the wound reminds him of Fern, it doesn't sound like we're talking about a possible puma attack," Claire said. She knew where her mind wanted to go, what conclusions it wanted to draw, but she was still fighting tooth and nail to not let it.

"Not that I know of." Matt shook his head. "At least, not anything we've caught on the security cameras."

"There's another possibility, you know," Owen spoke up. "And I know you're thinking it, too," he said as he turned to face Claire and she braced herself, knowing he was about to voice her fears aloud. "Just because Masrani _thinks_ he got all the dinosaurs off Sorna, doesn't mean he actually did. There could still be some out there."

"But you've been here for over a year now," Claire argued. "Surely you'd have seen them by now, if they were here. There's been no sign of anything."

"It's a big island," Owen reminded her. "And if they didn't want to be spotted, they would've stayed away."

"All of this is a big ' _if_ ,' " Claire grumbled, not wanting to agree with his conclusions, but at the same time struggling to come up with anything else that made sense. "And why would this dinosaur, whatever it was, attack only Keith and not Mike? And how did they manage to get away?"

"Maybe they shot it," Matt suggested.

"I don't remember hearing any gunshots," Claire said, but she knew it was a weak argument. After all, while they _thought_ that the attack (if that was what it was) had happened near the encampment, they didn't actually know that for sure. Actually, she was realizing, there was very little that they had solid confirmation on. They were really relying on the words of two strangers.

There was a long pause, as they all thought over the possible implications.

"It sort of makes sense," Owen said after a while, and both Matt and Claire turned to him in question. "Think about it, why hide if they were attacked by a puma? Or some other animal native to the island? Why would they think they couldn't share that? But a dinosaur…?"

"Maybe," Claire said slowly. "Except, even if you give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know about our operation here, by the time we saw them, they had seen Blue, Echo and Charlie. It's not like we don't know about dinosaurs."

"I think we're past giving them the benefit of the doubt," Matt said, and Owen immediately nodded his agreement. "They were up to something, I just don't know what. I'd suggest we go out and take a look, but with the storm it doesn't make sense to do so right now."

"Tomorrow," Owen suggested. "We can go look tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief break from cliffhangers. :) But, we're now over halfway through! Four more chapters to wrap it all up. As always, I'd love to hear what you're thinking (and if you don't want to write something, how about hitting that kudos button?). 
> 
> And if you're looking for something else to read, on the weekend Elise and I (finally) posted the first chapter of **Act III - Knocked Off Track** of [The Missing Years](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401844/chapters/40959770). If you haven't read it yet, please go check it out. 
> 
> It covers the three year gap between Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom. And while it is primarily about Claire and Owen, it also covers Eli and Henry's partnership and the creation of the Indoraptors. We've had a lot of fun trying to come up with a reasonable plot line that connects the two movies and expanding out the backgrounds for all the characters. So... go read it and then let us know what you think. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

It wasn't until they'd finished talking with Matt that Claire fully realized the implications of her earlier decision to not get on the helicopter. At the time, it had seemed so clear and obvious that the best place for her was to remain behind on Sorna. But now? Well, since the yacht had turned out to be nothing, and with the storm now in full force over the island, the rain lashing at the windows, it was turning out that there was little she could do there. At least, if she'd gone back to Nublar, she could be spending this time questioning Mike and Keith.

When Matt left them to go back to control, Owen had taken one look at the downpour before glancing at his watch and suggesting that the two of them might as well go have dinner while they figured out what to do next. So now they were sitting in the cafeteria, back at the same table Claire had been at earlier with the investors. However, unlike in the afternoon, the cafeteria was now busy, the tables crowded as everyone was stuck indoors and they had all gravitated towards the same place.

Claire was thankful that her shirt was mostly dry now, because the moment she'd stepped into the building and had seen how busy it was, she'd realized that the last thing she wanted was for everyone on Sorna to be looking at her dressed in Owen's clothes. While she knew she was probably being overly sensitive on the issue, Owen, thankfully, hadn't said anything when she'd slipped the sweatshirt off and draped it over the back of her chair. Although, she sort of assumed he was saving any quips he had for later, when they were alone.

Now, as they were eating tacos with Barry and Zia (who had both trickled in after them), Claire found that between the food and the company, she was actually starting to relax. It probably helped that they weren't talking about the afternoon and all the excitement, instead just catching up and focusing on mundane topics like movies and music. Or, at least, they had been.

"What's going on with the people on the boat?" Zia asked when there was a lull in the discussion.

"What do you mean?" Claire said, turning to her. She wasn't surprised that Zia knew about the people — Sorna was too small for anything to stay a secret, and they hadn't been trying to do that anyway.

"They're really being kept on their boat during all this?" Zia replied, pointing towards the windows just as there was a flash of lightning followed almost immediately by a loud boom of thunder that shook the small building.

"Where else would they go?" Barry commented. "At least, they're docked. Better than being stuck out at sea."

"Yeah, but…" Zia continued to stare at the windows, a few more flashes of lightning providing momentary glimpses of the outdoors. "I get that they're not authorized to be here. It just doesn't seem like being on their boat would be the safest place."

"It doesn't," Claire agreed after a brief pause, having also been staring outside. The wind had noticeably picked up over the course of their meal. And anytime the door to the building opened when someone entered or left, the noise from the storm felt like it almost drowned out everything inside. "I should probably tell Matt to bring them in."

"What? Why?" Owen asked, surprised. "They'll be fine on their boat."

"It's not actually them I'm concerned about," Claire admitted. "Don't forget that Matt has guys down at the docks to keep an eye on them. This doesn't feel fair to them, being stuck out there during this weather. But I don't like the idea of leaving the boat unsupervised. We can just as easily, maybe even _more_ easily, keep an eye on them if they're in here."

"That's true," Owen nodded, conceding her point.

"I think we might even have an open room," Zia said thoughtfully. "In the new building, what with Sarah having left last week. I think that freed one up, right?" She looked between Barry and Owen.

Claire wasn't surprised when Owen just shrugged at Zia's question, clearly unsure, while Barry nodded. She knew that Owen had never managed to be as social as either of his friends, instead mainly hanging out with just Barry and Zia. And that while Owen knew the names of the paddock techs and most of the guards who worked there, he hadn't bothered to learn anyone else's.

"I should go–" Claire started, before stopping, her gaze darting about the room.

She didn't really want to have to go outside and walk over to control to ask Matt. But, maybe there would be someone there who could pass it along. Her eyes lit up when she spotted Cam sitting at a table on the other side of the room. Perfect.

Getting up from her spot, she quickly crossed over to Cam's side, relaying her request to him. He nodded, pulling out his radio and passing the message along to Matt. Claire stayed there, and had a short discussion with Cam and Matt as to how they should do this (after confirming that there _was_ space to put the couple up for the night). A few minutes later, after everything was sorted out, Claire thanked Cam and then headed back to rejoin Owen and the others.

"All good?" Owen asked when she sat back down.

"Yeah," Claire nodded, picking up her taco again, before pausing to frown down at her plate. "Hey… where did my chips go?"

"What chips?" Owen asked innocently when she looked over at him.

Narrowing her eyes, Claire quickly glanced over at Barry and Zia. Zia just shrugged and took another bite of her taco, while Barry refused to meet her gaze.

"Owen," she whined.

"You weren't eating them," Owen said with a quick grin. "Didn't think you wanted them."

"I was saving them," she grumbled.

"For what?" he asked. He didn't wait for her answer before he added, "Consider it payback for all of my fries you've stolen over the years."

Owen's teasing smile was all that saved him from Claire's wrath. Well, that, and Zia immediately speaking up.

"You can have some of mine," she offered, pushing her plate across the table towards Claire.

"Thanks," Claire said, transfering a few chips from Zia's plate to her own. She shot a glare towards Owen as she tossed one into her mouth.

"You know, you may want to be nicer to me," Owen said just as Claire was finally biting into her taco again.

She looked over and instantly felt weary at the sly grin that was now on his face. "Why?" she asked apprehensively.

"If you're not, I _may_ decide to not share my bed," he said simply, picking up the final piece of his own taco and popping it into his mouth.

"I'll just get my own room," Claire immediately shot back.

"Um." This time it was Barry who spoke up, and Claire looked across the table to see that Barry looked a bit nervous and that Zia was now trying to cover a laugh.

"What?" she demanded.

"You just gave the only empty room to the couple from the boat," Barry reminded her.

His words made her freeze, before her shoulders dropped slightly. Dammit, he was right. And of _course,_ Owen wouldn't have forgotten that.

She turned back to Owen who just grinned at her as he chewed. It took her barely a second to come up with her own plan. Smiling now, she saw his grin falter slightly and she knew he was on guard. Still, she reached under the table, resting her hand on his knee for a second, before slid her hand up his leg — not far, just until she saw his eyes widen ever so slightly and he almost choked as he swallowed.

Her smile growing wider, she leaned towards him and asked, "You're really going to force me to sleep on a couch?"

"Fine," Owen said, acting as if his caving was a huge burden, his gaze locked on hers. "I _suppose_ I can share. It'll be a tight squeeze."

"Not that tight. It's bigger than your hammock," Claire reminded him. She saw his eyes darken momentarily, and she knew that he was remembering their last visit to the hammock in question.

"Now _that's_ what we need here," Zia said, and Claire and Owen were pulled back to the present, their attention returning across the table to their friends. "Hammocks."

"That would be nice," Owen admitted. "Maybe we can put in a request. Although… to whom?" He looked quizzically over at Claire. "Who _is_ in charge of requests like that?"

"That position Parker mentioned? Whoever takes that job would be responsible for it," Claire replied.

She knew that Owen had talked a few more times with Parker about the job, but that there hadn't been any movement on it (yet) and that Owen was still hesitant over the whole idea. They hadn't discussed it much since the first time he'd brought it up. Claire was always hesitant to say anything, because she didn't want him to feel like she was pressuring him to take it.

When he'd first brought it up, her initial reaction had been that he _should_ take it. There wasn't a normal career path for him to follow, what with his job training the raptors being so unique. But, when he'd balked at the suggestion, and then had seemed so worried about her response if he decided not to, she'd forced herself to step back and to try to look at it from his point of view. And while she still _did_ think it was a great opportunity, she also knew just how much he loved working with his raptors. And how much he'd miss it if he stopped. That his skills, his strengths, were in exactly what he was doing.

She still had complete faith that if he decides to take the job that he'd excel at it. That a lot of the skills that he used with the raptors would extend to managing people. But… if he'd asked her again (and he hadn't), she was no longer confident that she'd actually recommend he take it. Wanting him to take it just so she could see him a little bit more frequently felt petty. And, really, she'd rather see him a little less, but know that he was happy.

"Oh, right, that," Owen said, making a face, before looking at her hopefully, "But for now?"

Claire pulled out her phone, tapping in a note with a sigh, "I'll look into it."

"Thanks," he said, leaning towards her and giving her a quick kiss. As he pulled back, he winked and quickly added in a whisper, "You know, maybe we can have a repeat of our last hammock adventure later."

"Yeah, no," Claire immediately said, shaking her head as she wrinkled her nose. "I remember how thin the walls are here."

At that, Owen laughed.

o-o-o

"I don't get why you _still_ needed to get up at 5:30 this morning," Owen grumbled as he stared into his cup of coffee.

"No reason to _not_ stick to my schedule just because I'm stuck here," Claire replied, although he noticed that she was only half paying attention to him, her gaze glued to her phone where she was scrolling through her emails with one hand, while she mindlessly ate a piece of toast.

"Even the raptors don't like being up this early," he said, picking up his fork and finally stabbing the scrambled eggs on his plate. He hadn't been up this early (while on Sorna, anyway) in a long time, and he hadn't been all that sure that the cooks would have even started for the day when Claire had suggested they head over. He was thankful that they had, and that he hadn't had to try to figure out how to get coffee started.

" _You_ didn't have to get up," she reminded him. "You could've stayed in bed. In fact, if you're going to be this grumpy about it, maybe you should go _back_ to bed. Seems like you got up on the wrong side."

" _That_ is not my fault," Owen said, his mood lightening a bit at her words. "You know I like to sleep on the left."

"Yeah, well," Claire started, before mumbling something that he couldn't quite make out.

He'd been confused the previous evening when _she'd_ taken the left, and then had refused to budge when he'd said something. No matter how much he'd pressed, she'd refused to admit _why_ , her face going redder and redder (which had just intrigued him more), before she'd kissed him as a distraction (which he'd known it was, but he wasn't about to turn _that_ down).

"Well what?" he pressed, hopeful that maybe he'd get an answer from her now.

He didn't get one.

"You guys are up early."

Owen looked up to see Matt approaching their table, his plate, similar to Owen's, piled high with eggs, bacon and toast.

"See, I'm not the only early riser," Claire said, poking Owen in the side before gesturing for Matt to join them. "Other people think it's reasonable to be up now."

"I don't think I've ever seen you in here this early," Matt directed his comment towards Owen as he sat down.

"Not my choice," Owen said under his breath, trying not to wince at the kick to his shin from Claire.

"Any news about Mike and Keith?" Claire asked, changing the subject.

"The plan is for a helicopter to take them over around nine," Matt said. "I checked in before I came over. Keith is still stable and Austin said there's been no odd activity by either of them."

"That's good," Claire said. "Maybe we're all just being overly paranoid."

"Hopefully," Matt agreed. "We're actually completely visitor free now. That couple wanted to get on their way, so I've already seen them off."

"Already?" Owen asked, surprised. He glanced at his watch. "It's only 6:45."

"They're heading for Nublar," Matt said. "Wanted to get there in time to actually be able to spend the day at Jurassic World."

"Hm," Claire nodded.

Owen rolled his eyes when her phone beeped, another message or email or something arriving. It had been doing that almost nonstop since they'd gotten up. It was the one thing he _didn't_ miss when they were apart. His mornings were definitely more peaceful when it was just him. He watched as she read it and quickly tapped out a reply before returning her attention to him and Matt.

"Looks like I'm probably stuck here until around lunchtime. Zara said the helicopter should be able to come get me after it drops off Mike and Keith," Claire told them with a sigh.

Owen had to suppress a chuckle when she then frowned as it started to sink in just how long she was going to be there.

"There's lots you can do here," he reminded her.

"Yeah, I know," Claire said, glancing at her phone again, before turning it off and refocusing across the table at Matt. "Actually, I've been meaning to go over the security setup on the island. Maybe we can do that this morning."

"Sure," Matt agreed, after he swallowed. "I've actually been thinking about some things we should change based on yesterday's events."

Before Claire and Matt could get too caught up in their conversation (which Owen was already starting to tune out of), they were interrupted by Zia as she came and joined them.

"Owen? What are you doing out of bed before seven? I didn't think you knew how to get up this early."

He just hung his head as Claire started laughing.

o-o-o

Owen was in the middle of his morning training session with the raptors (and it was going well) when suddenly they all turned and raced across the paddock, heading for the inner gate that looked out into the main encampment.

His brow furrowing, Owen tried to see what had caught their attention, but from where he was standing, he couldn't make anything out. He quickly made his way around the catwalk, and as he neared the stairs, he could see people rushing about. There were a couple of guards heading down towards the dock while another group of them were standing in front of the office building, talking and gesturing frantically. Watching them, Owen was surprised when all of them suddenly turned and looked towards him, although he was pretty sure they weren't looking _at_ him, but at the paddock, before they returned to their huddle again.

His confusion grew when a moment later he saw Claire walking out of the nursery with Zia, and the two of them heading for the group of guards. As they approached the group, he watched as they turned to Claire and Zia, who both were already shaking their head in answer to whatever question they were being asked. Below him, he could hear the raptors chittering and squawking at each other, but he ignored them.

When Claire glanced over at the raptor paddock and pointed, before continuing whatever she was saying, Owen headed for the stairs. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he didn't like the fact that that was the second time the group had looked or pointed at the paddock.

He almost walked right into Barry at the bottom of the stairs.

"What's going on?" Barry asked. "What's with the girls?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," Owen replied, glancing quickly through the gates into the paddock. Blue, Echo and Charlie weren't looking at him, though. They were still looking across the field towards the action.

When Owen started walking again, aiming for where Claire and the others were, he wasn't surprised when Barry fell into step beside him. He picked up his pace slightly, and the two hurried over to the group.

"What's going on?" Owen asked, interrupting whatever they were talking about when he got close. "Why are my girls so distracted?"

"It's Grape and Olive," Zia replied before anyone else had a chance to say anything. "They're missing."

"They're _what_?" Owen exclaimed.

"Missing?" Barry blurted out at the same time.

"I was going to give them their morning meal and their cage is empty," Zia explained, her expression frantic. "I've looked everywhere."

"What about their trackers?" Owen asked. "Could they have just got out somehow?"

"They're not showing up on our maps," Matt answered. "We checked there first."

"Where else could they be?" Owen started to ask, before he remembered what he'd seen earlier, and he immediately turned to face the docks. "The couple?! Really?"

" _Merde,_ " Barry said from beside him.

Owen hadn't even realized he'd started walking until he felt Claire's hand on his arm, pulling him back. "What?" He couldn't help it when he snapped out the question as he spun back around.

"We don't know that they're involved," Claire said, her voice neutral. "A couple of the guards are taking the boat to go look, and the ACU from Nublar is also sending out a boat. The couple said they were heading there."

"Which was probably a lie," Owen insisted. "If they took the raptors, there's no way they're going to Nublar."

"Right, but that's only _if_ they took them," Claire said. "And we don't know that they did."

"Who else could it be?" Owen asked. "If they got out on their own, their trackers should be working. And while I wouldn't put it past them to figure out a way through the chain link fence, I don't know how they'd get the door open."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough. When they left they _were_ heading towards Nublar," Matt said. "If they veered away, it wasn't until they were out of sight, which means they would have less of a head start. And we've also put in a call to the coast guard. They're out looking as well, and will cast a wider net."

Owen scrubbed a hand down his face. "Fuck," he swore under his breath, staring at the ground for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. He could feel Claire's hand still resting on his arm, but for once, her presence wasn't bringing him comfort.

It was Zia's whispered, "I'm sorry," that had him finally looking back up at the group.

"What?" he asked, not sure he'd heard her correctly.

"I'm sorry. I was so busy this morning, one of the compys seems to have a cough or something, and I didn't do my normal check on them first thing," Zia apologized. "I should've caught this earlier."

"Not your fault," Owen replied immediately, shaking his head. "Really, Zia. Not your fault." A thought hitting him, he turned to Claire. "What about the helicopter? That would help, right?"

"It would," she agreed. "But it was already on its way to San Jose, so we have to wait for it to finish dropping off Keith and Mike before it can come here."

"Really?" Owen's jaw dropped. "I thought you said the guy was fine. Surely this is a bigger priority."

"We can't just be bringing them back here. And the coast guard has helicopters, too," Claire reminded him. "We're looking, I promise. Everyone's on it."

"Wait," Owen turned his attention back to Zia. "You were dealing with the compys, you said. Does that mean _they're_ all here?"

"Yep. All present and accounted for," Zia nodded.

"How would the couple have even known about the baby raptors?" Barry asked, and everyone turned to him. "They weren't allowed onto the island until the middle of the storm. And it's not like we gave them a tour."

The question stumped Owen. There were very few people who knew about the baby raptors. He knew that Claire and Jurassic World hadn't started advertising them as a coming attraction. And that they _wouldn't_ , not until they were sure they _would_ be an attraction. In fact, outside of those living on Sorna, he was pretty sure it was only people pretty high up the chain in InGen and Jurassic World who knew about them. And the investors from yesterday, but from what Claire had said, they hadn't been told about the raptors until their visit.

"I don't know," Claire finally voiced everyone's thoughts aloud, answering Barry's question. "But, once we find them…"

" _If_ we even find them," Owen mumbled, his mind whirling back to the _last_ unexpected boat that had shown up at the island and their futile efforts to track it down. He wasn't surprised when Claire squeezed his arm gently, before patting it, having clearly heard him.

This time, however, unlike that last time, Claire didn't offer up any assurances or platitudes. He wasn't sure if that made him feel better, or worse.

o-o-o

Claire had managed to convince Owen to go back to his girls while they waited to hear about the boat. He had wanted to hang around, but him glaring and pacing about was just making everyone more on edge and she didn't really want to have to intervene if things started to get heated and tempers flared.

Barry and Zia had both caught on to what she was doing and had helped out. In fact, it was probably Zia's suggestion that she could use the time to check on Charlie's limp that had finally sold Owen. But, he'd still scowled at Claire before he'd finally walked away with them.

She'd wanted to go with them. But she also knew that it was better that she stay back. If they didn't find the boat soon then she was going to have to figure out their next steps. And, dammit, this was _not_ how today was supposed to go. She had things she was supposed to be doing, and not a single one of them involved Sorna.

After Matt asked a few of the guards to do another sweep of the buildings and grounds (not that they really thought they'd find Olive and Grape, but more just to be thorough), Claire had followed him back to control. They'd both hovered about, watching the screens anxiously. The guards had so far come up empty in their searches.

It took the better part of an hour before they finally got an update. The yacht had been spotted approaching Nublar from the south west and an ACU team was heading to intercept.

The next ten minutes seemed to creep by, while they waited for news. And then, when it came, it felt anti-climatic. The raptors weren't on board and the couple was extremely confused by the ACU's presence.

Claire knew that the outcome should've been expected the moment they found the boat and saw the direction it was heading. No way would it make sense to steal the raptors and then head to Jurassic World for the day. Still, she'd been holding out hope.

Now, however, she knew that she needed to figure out a new plan on where to search. And, more importantly, she needed to update Owen.

"I'll come with you," Matt said.

She turned to look at him in surprise, wondering how he knew what she was planning, before she realized she must have been thinking aloud.

"I want to ask him some more questions about the raptors. What he thinks they're capable of. I agree that it seems unlikely they could escape on their own, but…" Matt shrugged. "No one else was here."

"Yeah," Claire sighed, as she led the way out of the control room. "I'm at a loss as to where to even suggest we start searching for them next."

The two of them walked over to the raptor paddock in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. They found Owen, Barry and Zia standing on the catwalk, looking down into the paddock below, where the raptors were milling about.

"Any news?" Owen asked hopefully, turning around to look at them the moment they stepped foot onto the catwalk. Claire felt her heart clench when his face dropped almost instantly, and she knew that he'd read her own expression. "You didn't find them."

"No," Claire said. "Well, yes. I mean, we found the boat, but the raptors weren't on it."

"Fuck," Owen swore, kicking out at the railing. The clang of his boot against it startled the raptors below, who let out various squawks and snarls at the noise, as they looked up to see what was going on.

"But if they didn't take them…?" Zia asked the question that was on everyone's mind. "Where could they be?"

"We know no one approached the docks," Matt said. "I reviewed all the footage from overnight myself this morning. But, I'm also inclined to agree that they wouldn't be able to open the door on their own. Even if I buy that they could turn the handle, they're too small. They can't reach it."

"They're crafty," Owen offered up, a half-smile, half-grimace on his face. "But, yeah, I don't buy that either. Even if they somehow managed to get through that first door, they would still need to get through another to get out of the building. I really don't think they could get out on their own."

"Which means someone had to be involved," Claire said. "But who? Anyone who is working here wouldn't have anywhere to hide them."

"And no one's missing," Matt added, before anyone could ask that question. "I checked that, too."

"What if…?" Owen started, before trailing off. Claire looked over at him to see that his gaze was now focused across the raptor paddock and out towards the rest of Sorna.

"What?" she asked, already dreading the possible answer. Although, since she was completely out of ideas, _anything_ would be helpful now.

"What if Mike and Keith weren't here alone?" Owen finally said, turning back to the group. "We've never figured out how they got here. What if there are others?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, another cliffhanger. :) Almost to the end! Only three chapters left. It's going to be a bit sad to say good bye to this universe, but it's been a fun journey. Thanks to all of you who have joined me on it.
> 
> PS. If you're looking for something a bit more fun (and short), I posted another **Snapshot** on the weekend called **[Bed Wars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16882443/chapters/63427237)**. Go check it out. :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"We need to go out there," Owen insisted, frustrated that everyone was continually shooting down his suggestion. "Us standing around and talking isn't going to find them. We need to be out there."

"It still doesn't make sense," Claire countered. "Mike and Keith never saw the baby raptors, either. How would they know — or how would whoever was with them — know that there were any baby dinos to steal?"

"We're not going to be able to answer that without going out there," Owen argued again, pointing insistently at the perimeter fence they were now standing beside.

After Owen had raised the possibility that Mike and Keith hadn't been alone, they'd retreated down to look at the gate in the fence. The gate that now made the main encampment accessible to the rest of Sorna since they'd torn the hole into the fencing in order to rescue the guys. The gate that no one could decide whether it looked like it had been forced open or not overnight.

Owen looked back at the group, "We're just wasting time. If someone came and took them, who knows how far they've gotten. And they'll just be getting farther away as we stand here and continue to debate this."

"I can have Austin question Mike–" Matt started before cutting himself off and swearing lightly. "No, wait, I _can't_. They've probably already been dropped off in San Jose."

Which felt like the last straw to Owen.

"That's it. If _you_ don't want to go, then _I'm_ going to go," he ground out, trying to push past everyone.

"Wait," Barry said. "If people came through… shouldn't we have it on camera? But, more importantly… why didn't they set off the motion sensors?"

At that question Owen paused, turning with the rest to stare out the perimeter fence again, although what they were going to find doing that, Owen wasn't sure.

"Right. If these hypothetical people exist, surely they should've expected it to go off," Claire agreed. "Why didn't it? Doesn't the fact it didn't mean that no one came through?"

At that, the whole group turned to look at Matt, who sighed and pulled out his radio. "Let me check."

Owen waited, impatiently, as Matt had a discussion with the guards back in control. After a short exchange, Matt turned back to the group.

"They're going through the feeds, but they said with all the rain last night, it's really hard to definitively see anything."

"And the alarms?" Zia asked.

"Looks like when we silenced them the second time yesterday, they got turned off," Matt admitted with a grimace.

"So we don't know that anyone came through," Claire said.

"Right, but we also don't know that anyone _didn't_ come through," Owen reminded her. "We need to go out there. We already made this decision yesterday, remember? That we wanted to figure out how Keith was actually injured — what animal might be out there. Well, now we can kill two birds with one stone."

There was a brief pause while everyone contemplated that before Claire turned to him and stated, "I don't like this. It feels off. Somethings wrong."

"Of _course_ something's wrong. Grape and Olive are missing," he replied, trying to keep his tone light, trying not to let the unease and frustration he was feeling show.

However, now that he was face-to-face with Claire, he could see the worry that was pooling in her gaze and the way she was fidgeting with hands, almost reaching for him, but clearly holding back. However, at his words, she just grimaced and looked away, biting her lip as she bit back a retort.

"It doesn't have to be a lot of us," Owen added. "Myself and maybe a couple of guards. We saw where they came out of the jungle yesterday. We can attempt to retrace their steps."

"No," Claire replied, shaking her head firmly. "You're not doing that. I'm not visiting you in a hospital. Not again. Not this soon. I'll do it."

"You?!" Owen looked at her in disbelief. "Why, so I can visit _you_ in a hospital?"

"So you admit that your plan is stupid," she countered, looking smugly at him.

"Well, no, not if I–" he started before faltering, clearly understanding he was about to enter dangerous territory.

"Oh, so only if _I_ –"

"How about _neither_ of you do that, and we think of something else?" Barry interrupted Claire, cutting her off before she could get going on her rant.

Watching as Claire's face suddenly flushed, Owen felt a little bad (but only a little), as he knew that she would hate that she was having this argument with him in front of others. He returned his attention to the rest of the group.

"Like I've said, we're not going to get answers standing around here. Our best bet is to get out there."

"What about the helicopter?" Zia suggested.

"What about it?" Owen asked.

"It should be headed this way now, right? Why don't we wait for it to arrive."

Matt answered before Owen could. "Because it'll take too long. And, the jungle is too dense. We wouldn't be able to see anything. I hate to say it, but I agree with Owen. We need to send some people out."

"Fine, but I'm going," Claire insisted again.

"In that?" Zia asked. "I mean, I've got some clothes you could borrow, but I don't think we're the same shoe size."

Owen barely managed to contain his snicker, as he saw Claire's face droop as she looked down at what she was wearing — her clothes from yesterday. An outfit he knew that she'd picked out specifically for her meeting with the investors, _not_ one designed to go for a hike in the jungle.

Claire just sighed, looking away from the group, and Owen couldn't help but reach for her, sliding his hand down her arm until he was grasping her fingers. She turned back to him when he squeezed them lightly, her gaze weary.

"It'll be fine," he promised, before it was his turn to wince, as he remembered her words from a few months ago — _No more promises._

However, just as he was about to speak up again, Matt's radio crackled, and they all watched as he listened, his gaze slowly cycling from calm, to shock, to anger.

"What is it?" Claire asked the moment Matt lowered the radio, and Owen hadn't realized he was still holding her hand until he felt her squeezing his in a death grip.

"They caught sight of people leaving the nursery around 3am. Two, maybe three. Hard to tell for sure," Matt answered.

" _Merde,_ " Barry swore.

o-o-o

Stepping outside the perimeter fence, Owen could feel a shiver run up his spine. Even after a year of living on Sorna, he'd only been on the other side once before. And that time, he'd mainly been in a helicopter as they'd tracked down his wayward girls after the field test. He'd never just gone for a walk. Not that _this_ was a walk, he reminded himself.

In fact, he sort of felt like he was back in the Navy and participating in the training drills from his early bootcamp days, loaded down with a heavy pack on his back and a rifle clutched in his hands. Of course, this time it was a tranq rifle, but the feeling of not being sure what he'd got himself into was the same.

Still… they needed answers, and everyone was at a loss as to what else to suggest. While they didn't have any clear video of the gate in the fence that showed the people who had been at the nursery leaving or entering, they also didn't have them on any other video. And there were no signs that any other boats had approached the dock overnight. The idea that they must have escaped through the gate still felt like their best bet.

Of course, the video feed had them in the encampment at 3am and it was now after 10. More than enough time for whoever the ACU had seen on camera to have already left the island and be on their way to who knows where.

But Owen didn't want to focus on that. He wanted to believe that they were going to have a chance. That _this time_ things would work in their favour.

He was startled out of his thoughts by Barry coming to a stop beside him. "So… what's the plan?"

"Find Grape and Olive," Owen replied, not even needing to look in Barry's direction to know that his friend was frowning at him. "Hopefully, we'll be able to pick up whatever route Mike and Keith took to get here from… well, wherever they came from."

"This really doesn't seem like your most thought-out idea," Barry mumbled under his breath, but Owen heard him all the same.

"Wasn't how I was expecting to spend my day," Owen shrugged. "Didn't know I needed a plan. If I'd known, I would've spent my evening working on it."

Barry just snorted. "Yeah, right. With Claire visiting? Like you'd have ever spent your evening doing that."

"Considering she was stuck trying to work from her phone last night, it would've actually been a nice distraction from all her ranting," Owen said, grinning at Barry briefly before he turned around to check that the rest of their small team had followed them through.

In the end it was decided that Owen, Barry and two guards — Maynard and Jacobs — would go and scout out the area, while Matt would stay behind in control with Claire. Once the helicopter showed up, it would also be sent out to do recon over the island. Owen had thought that Claire was going to argue more, but she seemed to finally acquiesce when Barry agreed to go.

Well, that, and she'd been somewhat overruled by Matt — there just wasn't enough ACU on the island to send more than a couple out with them. Which was also why they were all loaded down with rifles and packs. Claire had just kept repeating "better you take it and not need it, then need it and not have it," while adding more items to Owen's bag, and after a while he'd given up arguing (although he _had_ discreetly removed a few things). Still, the pack weighing down on his shoulders was mostly just a reminder of how long it had been since he'd done something like this. And for a moment, he was distracted by the thought of whether he could convince Claire to go camping…

" _Control to Grady. Control to Grady._ "

Owen rolled his eyes before unclipping his radio and pulling it up. "Yep?"

" _Just wanted to confirm you had it on,_ " Claire's voice rang out and he didn't bother to suppress a second eye roll.

Instead, he just simply replied, "We're heading out."

" _Keep in contact,_ " Claire reminded him.

" _Five minute check-ins, please,_ " Matt added.

"Will do," Owen agreed, before clipping his radio back to his belt and focusing on the rest of his team. "Okay, everyone ready?"

He got a round of _yes_ in reply.

"So, where to?" Barry asked.

Owen turned back to the jungle ahead of them and pointed to what looked almost like an opening in the bushes, the plants clearly trampled, stems broken and leaves crushed. "Through there."

o-o-o

Claire was pacing the back of the control room. She knew that her pacing was somewhat annoying and that she should stop, but so far, no one had said anything to her (probably because no one wanted to piss her off since she was, sort of, their boss). Normally, just knowing that people _wouldn't_ say something because of her title would bug her and she'd back off (she didn't _like_ the ice bitch moniker some people labelled her with), but her anxiety was just too high.

She knew she should calm down. Owen had only headed out into the jungle 15 minutes earlier and so far, he'd been diligent about checking in. Well, more accurately, one of the ACU men who'd gone with him had been diligent about checking in. Claire was trying (and not succeeding) to not read too much into that.

She just wished there was something she could _do_. Something more than waiting for the next check-in where all they'd learn is that the trail they were following seemed recent, but that they still hadn't found anything yet.

Claire also wasn't sure what she actually wanted the outcome to be. Did she _want_ them to find something? Sure, she'd like it if they got Olive and Grape back, but she didn't really want Owen to come across whoever had taken them. She had a sinking feeling in her gut that if he did, things weren't going to go well. She didn't trust Owen to keep a cool head and not do something rash. Which, she knew, was probably underestimating him — but, then again, he _had_ shown up at the Lockwood Estate without a plan and really the only thing he'd accomplished there was getting himself shot.

Forcing herself to halt her pacing (at least, momentarily) Claire focused back on the monitors, scanning over all the various feeds. Except for those in control (and Owen and his group), most everyone else was just proceeding like it was any other day. The lab people in the lab, Zia in the nursery checking on the compys, and so on. Standing there, watching the feeds change one by one, rotating their way randomly throughout the encampment, Claire could almost imagine that she was back on Nublar and in the control room there, listening to Vivian and Lowery give her an update on the day. And that her biggest concern was the number of kids in the lost and found.

"Wait." Claire took a step closer to the screens, one of the feeds from the dock catching her attention. "The boat. How did I forget about the boat?"

"What about it?" Matt asked, looking up at her from where he was seated behind one of the many terminals.

"How did Mike and Keith get on the island?" Claire inquired, thinking aloud. "We still haven't figured that out. But, it was probably by a boat. A helicopter would be too noisy and way too hard to hide. But a boat… while difficult, would be definitely possible. So, if there are others on the island…" As she trailed off, she looked away from the screens and down to Matt, who was nodding along with her.

"There must be a boat," he agreed.

"Or, at least, there must have been at some point," she said. "I suppose it could've left by now. But, what if we're going about this the wrong way? Owen and the guys are following after them — hopefully, assuming they're on the right trail — which means they're going to be constantly playing catch up. What we need to do is to try and get in front of whoever was here."

"Right, we should be looking for the boat," Matt said, nodding excitedly, turning back to the computer in front of him. He tapped out a few commands before frowning. "The helicopter is still almost an hour away."

Claire stepped closer to the screens. "I don't know that we can wait that long. But look–" She pointed at the feed she'd been looking at earlier, as it reappeared on the screen. "We don't need to. We've got a boat."

The ACU's boat (well, the non "ferry" boat) that had been kept at Sorna ever since the _last_ kidnapping had gone out earlier to try to catch up with the couple on the yacht. However, what had caught Claire's attention on the feeds was when she'd noticed it approaching the docks, finally returning from its earlier quest.

"Couldn't we take the boat and just sort of, I don't know, circle the island?" Claire suggested. "Maybe we'd come across theirs?"

"I suppose so," Matt agreed slowly, tapping a finger absently against the desk as he thought. "Nublar is northeast of us, which means if they were trying to remain undetected, they probably came up from the south." He tapped out another command, replacing the images on one of the monitors in front of them with a map of Sorna, eyeing it speculatively.

"If they ran into any trouble, coming from the south would be hard to explain," one of the other guards in the room commented. "I mean, it would look suspicious being out there in the middle of nowhere. But, if they headed out towards Nublar first, maybe even spent the day there, then when they left, appeared to head southeast, before cutting back…"

Claire frowned, trying to follow the route the guard was suggesting.

"Let me show you," the guard said, getting up and walking over to the monitor. She watched as he traced an imaginary line from the docks on Nublar back towards Costa Rica for a bit, while angling south, before cutting back west towards Sorna. "If they did something like this, they'd probably end up arriving north of us. The route would not only look slightly less suspicious, but it builds in some more 'safety', what with the other islands as stopping points if need be. Of course, there's also nothing stopping them from taking a different route once they leave here."

"Which they might've already done," Matt said, letting out a sigh as he sat back in his chair, contemplating the map.

Claire looked between Matt and the guard, but she wasn't sure she had any insight to offer up. All she knew was that she wanted to be _doing_ something. No more just standing around.

"We're just wasting time debating this. We should get the boat out there. At least then..." Claire spoke up when the silence started to stretch, internally wincing at the realization that she was repeating Owen's earlier argument — the argument she'd tried to counter.

"Yeah," Matt agreed, pushing away from the desk and standing up. "And I think Gilbert is right, we should look north first."

"You're going to go?" Claire asked, a bit surprised when Matt grabbed his radio off the charger before heading to the door. She quickly followed after him.

"No." Matt shook his head, holding the door to the building open for her to pass through in front of him. "But since we don't want to waste time, and since I want to talk to Foster and Burke in person, I figured I should just go straight to the docks and meet them there."

Nodding, Claire started across the encampment with him. She could see that the boat was docked now.

"I want to go with them," she told Matt, as they finally reached the dock. Before he could say anything, she quickly added, "There's nothing I can do in the control room. At least on the boat I can be another set of eyes."

Matt paused on the dock, giving her a look over, and Claire just stood taller in response. After a long moment, he finally nodded. "Fine. But you have to promise to stay on the boat."

"Promise."

o-o-o

While there had been clear evidence where the men had emerged from the jungle near the perimeter fence, Owen had been worried that the moment they stepped into the jungle it'd be difficult to trace their route. However, it was turning out to be much easier than he could've hoped for.

The jungle was dense, which should've made their trail harder to follow. But Mike and Keith (and the others, assuming they'd also gone this way) hadn't at all attempted to cover their tracks. And, in fact, had obviously been using machetes (or something like that) to hack their way through in some of the thicker areas, leaving a very clear trail for Owen and the others to follow.

The first 40 minutes of their hike had been uneventful, as they continued to simply follow the path that was laid out in front of them. They'd been trying to predict where they might be headed, all of them expecting that the trail would eventually lead them to the coast, to wherever Mike and Keith had started from (and probably a boat, although Owen expected they would likely find it long gone). However, one of the guards with them had been tracking their route and so far, they seemed to be heading straight inland, leaving them all confused. Sure, there were open areas inland where a helicopter could possibly land, but they had all agreed that it would be impossible for a helicopter to have come to the island without their knowledge, so where was it taking them?

"I'd ask you if you were sure we were on the right route, except, well," Barry commented as he pointed at the very clear trail ahead of them. "Why didn't they even _attempt_ to cover their tracks?"

"Must have thought they wouldn't need to," Owen said, a sinking feeling settling in his gut. He'd been trying to avoid thinking about that question, as the answer he kept coming back to, was that they knew they could get away long before anyone would be able to follow them. Owen didn't want to even consider the idea that they weren't going to find Grape and Olive at the end of the trail.

Barry didn't say anything in response, and the four of them continued forward for another few minutes before a rustling sound off to their side had everyone freezing in their tracks. Owen had slung his rifle over his shoulder earlier, but now he held it in front of him, although there was nothing specific to aim at.

"What was that?" Jacobs whispered.

"Not sure," Owen replied just as quietly, his gaze sweeping over Barry, Jacobs, and Maynard. Like him, they were all pointing their rifles off into the jungle. "Probably nothing."

"Right, except we still don't know what attacked Keith," Barry reminded him. "All we know is that there's probably _something_ large out here."

That was another fact that Owen had been trying not to think about. It was also one of the reasons he knew why Claire had insisted that everyone was heavily armed. The rifles Owen and Barry were carrying were both tranq guns, but Jacobs and Maynard were armed with both tranq rifles _and_ regular ones. The memory of the Indoraptors had not faded and no one wanted to take any chances.

They all stood still for a couple more minutes, the seconds ticking by agonizingly slowly, but there were no more unexpected sounds from the jungle. Just the regular white noise of the leaves rustling and water rushing.

Although the water sound was unexpected, Owen realized after a moment. They were nowhere near the coast, but it didn't sound like waves crashing against a shore anyway. It sounded more like a river.

"Anyone else hear that?" he asked. "Is there a river nearby?"

"We don't actually have a very good map of the terrain," Maynard admitted. "I mean, I've seen satellite pictures and I know there is a river, but I don't know exactly where it is. With all the tree cover it's been hard to map its exact route. I suppose we could be near it."

"Hmm," Owen said, as he considered this new revelation. "That could explain our route. Instead of hiking all the way back to the coast somewhere, maybe they used the river."

He purposefully didn't voice the obvious conclusion to that. That if they _had_ used the river, there was no way they were going to catch up to them. Really, the fact that he'd ever even thought that they could, had been pretty far-fetched to begin with, but it still felt better to be out there _trying_ then sitting around and just waiting.

There was a long stretch of silence as no one had anything to say to that, and Owen knew they were probably all thinking the same things as him.

"Well, maybe they'll have left something behind. Something we can use to figure out who they are," he finally said, squaring his shoulders. "We've come this far, we might as well still see where this ends."

Owen didn't wait for the rest to agree before he started forward along the trail again, moving faster than before, no longer concerned about the noise they were making. Now that it felt like his hopes were dashed, he just wanted this to be over. He wondered if Claire would be able to stick around a little longer. He really didn't want to be alone now.

"Did you hear that?"

This time the comment came from Barry, and once again the four of them paused.

"Hear what?" Owen asked, not wanting to admit that he'd been so lost in his thoughts that he had completely missed whatever Barry had heard.

"Does that sound like _people_?" Jacobs asked, his head tilted to the side as he listened intently.

A spark of hope jolted to life inside of Owen, even though he desperately tried to tamp it down. But it was hard to push it aside — if there were people, they _had_ to be involved in whatever had happened.

"I wonder what they're doing?" Barry voiced aloud what they were all thinking. "Shouldn't they be gone by now?"

"Maybe they were hoping to steal more stuff?" Maynard suggested, shrugging when they all looked over at him. "They left the compys. Why? There are more of them, and they're smaller. You'd think they'd be the easier ones to steal."

"I can't tell how many people there are," Owen said, ignoring the speculation. "We need to get closer. Confirm that whoever they are, that they have Grape and Olive. And then figure out a plan."

This time, when they all started forward, Owen noticed that everyone was again actively trying to be quiet. No one wanted to give away their arrival, not until they knew what they may be walking into.

"Arrghhhhh!" A scream broke through the jungle, startling all of them and causing a group of birds to take flight.

Owen hesitated for barely a second before he charged forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters to go... :)
> 
> PS -- new chapter of [**The Missing Years**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401844/chapters/63770896) was posted on the weekend.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

They'd been out on the boat for about twenty minutes, but Claire was already second-guessing her suggestion. On one hand, it was nice to feel like she was actually doing _something_ , but on the other, she knew the odds of them coming across anything were slim to none. After all, Olive and Grape had been stolen over seven hours earlier, so why would whoever had taken them still be anywhere near the island?

But, ignoring that, what was actually bugging her even more, she realized, was that she had absolutely no clue _who_ was behind all of this. Who would've had information to know that there were dinosaurs on Sorna in the first place? And from the bits of video footage they'd been eventually able to piece together of the kidnappers, it looked like they had headed pretty much straight for the nursery, which meant that they knew there were baby dinos on site and _where_. How would they have known that?

The more she had thought about it, the more worried she had got that this was _also_ going to turn out to be an inside job. Which had then sent her thoughts spiraling over all the people on Sorna. Could it be one of the guards? Maybe turning off the motion sensors _hadn't_ been an accident after all, but preplanned. Except… even if they'd disabled those, the only reason the kidnappers had been able to even get into the encampment in the first place was because they'd created the hole to rescue Mike and Keith.

Of course, Mike and Keith had to be in on everything, too. But Keith's injury had been all too real. And not just real, but _bad_. Bad enough that they had legitimately needed their help. She found it difficult to fathom that anyone would've purposefully allowed themselves to be injured that badly. Also, there would've been no way for them to have known that anyone from the site would help. And even more so, that _by helping_ that they would end up with an entry point through the fence into the encampment.

Ugh, there was nothing Claire hated more than having lots of questions and no answers. Scowling, she continued to keep her gaze focused on the shoreline, on the off chance that she'd see something useful, even though she thought like this whole endeavour was useless.

She was also really wishing she'd taken the time to find a hat. Luckily, she'd put her hair up in a ponytail that morning (mainly because she hadn't had access to most of her normal styling products and Zia had offered up a hair elastic in sympathy), so at least it wasn't whipping around her face. But there was nothing to protect her from the sun that was beating down on her. She just _knew_ she was going to end up with a sunburn. Probably the only thing they'd end up "finding" on this whole trip.

Grumbling to herself (she really had no one to blame about the impromptu boat trip but herself), she debated asking if there was any more sunscreen on board. She'd already emptied the first bottle that Foster, the ACU member who was piloting the boat, had offered up when she'd first stepped on board. Sucking up her pride, she was about to turn and do so when Foster spoke up, "I see a boat."

Claire abandoned her spot near the back (not that she was all that far back, the boat they were on wasn't actually all that big), and moved up to the front to join Foster and the other ACU officer, Burke. The boat Foster had spotted appeared to be moored about a hundred feet off shore.

Foster throttled down their boat, keeping them away from the other. "I don't see anyone on it."

"Me, either," Burke confirmed, as he used a pair of binoculars to search it.

"What does that mean?" Claire asked. While she hadn't expected to find a boat, she was more confused now that they had and it appeared to be empty. Why hadn't the kidnappers returned? She _really_ didn't like where her thoughts immediately leapt. What if whatever had injured Keith had also attacked the rest of the kidnappers? And if that had happened — "Has Owen still been checking in?"

"Yep," Foster confirmed, and she immediately relaxed. Until he followed it with: "Well, I think so. I've been doing the same and I'm pretty sure Matt would've said something if they hadn't."

"Huh." Trying to ignore any thoughts of Owen and his group having run into issues, she focused on the other boat as Foster slowly increased the throttle, bringing them closer to it. Why hadn't the kidnappers returned to it?

"Look," Burke said, pointing towards the shore. "Seems like they found a river."

Claire looked in the direction he was pointing. If you weren't looking for it, it would've been easy to miss the mouth of the river, as it wasn't particularly wide, and the jungle was growing over top of it, sheltering it somewhat from view.

"That river doesn't look very big. They must've had another boat with them," Foster said. "Like a zodiac or dinghy and decided to leave their boat here and take it upstream. I wonder where that river ends."

"Doesn't really matter where it ends," Claire pointed out. "Walking to the base from here would take a long time, but using the river would probably cut down a lot of that travel time. And, it would allow them to come at the encampment from the cover of the jungle. And _that_ is probably what they really wanted. It would also mean they wouldn't have to haul Olive and Grape as far on their way back."

"But why haven't they come back out?" Burke asked.

"Boat trouble?" Foster suggested, shrugging when the other two looked over at him. "Rivers can be unpredictable. There might be rapids. Or a waterfall. Who knows what they could've run into."

"Can we make it up the river?" Claire asked, contemplating their options. Now that they'd found the boat, what were they supposed to do? Truth be told, she hadn't considered their next course of action because, deep down, she hadn't expected to find much of anything in the first place.

"In this? No," Foster shook his head. "But, we've got a dinghy. I suppose we could try. Let me ask Matt what he thinks we should do."

Claire didn't bother paying attention as Foster radioed Matt, instead focusing off into the jungle. If the kidnappers had encountered boat trouble, well, that could mean they were making their way back out here by foot. And if they were, they could just walk out of the jungle any moment now.

"Matt said we can go," Foster said, interrupting her musings. "It'll just take a bit to get set up."

Claire watched, once again feeling useless, as he maneuvered the boat farther away from the abandoned one before dropping an anchor. The dinghy turned out to be a small inflatable boat that had been kept packed away. When they'd first started to inflate it, Claire had been nervous that they were going to end up going up the river in what initially looked to be equivalent to a basic raft you might take out on a lake as a kid. However, she was comforted when she realized it was a lot more sturdy than that. It had a rigid board for the base, and there was actually a small outboard motor that was attached as well.

Faster than she'd expected the two guys had the boat in the water and Burke was gesturing to her to climb aboard.

"I'm kind of surprised Matt's allowing me to go with you," she commented, once the three of them were in the dinghy and had started up the river.

"Me too," Foster admitted, grinning at her when she turned to him in surprise. She hadn't been expecting him to admit that. "But he wasn't keen on leaving you alone on the boat. And it was either leave you _and_ one of us behind, or, well…"

"Thanks," Claire said, giving him a slight eye roll.

A surprising side benefit of her relationship with Owen, something she had never expected, was how it had changed her relationship with other employees. Before Owen, she knew that many of them had viewed her as uptight and bossy and unreasonable (all characteristics she felt were unfair, well, except maybe for bossy). But now they seemed more willing to actually see her as a _person_ , and to _joke_ with her. It felt… nice.

They all fell into silence for a couple of minutes, before Burke spoke up. "I just hope we find something. I really don't like that we left the boat behind."

"Yeah, same," Foster agreed.

"Do you think something might happen to it?" Claire asked.

Before either of the two men could answer her, a scream broke through the jungle.

"Arrghhhhh!"

o-o-o

As Owen burst out of the jungle into the small clearing in response to the scream, he realized that (once again) him acting before thinking maybe wasn't the _best_ idea. Of course, his sudden appearance (and then that of Maynard, Jacobs and Barry), _did_ seem to startle everyone, the noise in the clearing coming to a sudden halt.

He quickly scanned the area. To his left was the river, and on the bank was an inflatable zodiac (although it was looking a little _less_ inflated than Owen expected) that was resting half in/half out of the river. And while he could hear Grape and Olive both squawking, he couldn't see them. He assumed they were in the cages he could see the tops of peaking out of the boat.

Standing beside the zodiac were two men who were busy pointing guns across the clearing. They briefly looked at him, before focusing back in the direction they were aiming. Following the barrels of the guns, Owen saw a third man on the ground who appeared to be trying to scurry backwards towards the other two. There was blood dripping down the man's arm — he must have been the one who screamed, Owen thought — and the man didn't seem to be able to use one of his legs as it was dragging along the ground uselessly.

When a loud snarl rang out across the clearing, without thinking Owen absently replied, "Not now, Echo."

It took half a second for his own words to register with him before his gaze snapped up from the guy on the ground, only for it to land on three raptors. Three _fully grown_ raptors. Three fully grown raptors who _were not_ Blue, Echo or Charlie.

He blinked. Then blinked again. And then a third time, just to be sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

"What the fuck?"

" _Merde_."

"Those aren't ours, _right_?"

The three comments came out almost on top of each other, but Owen ignored them, his gaze locked on the raptors as he carefully aimed his tranq rifle at them. The middle one hissed and took a step forward towards the guy on the ground who immediately froze in response, stopping his backwards scramble.

Owen watched as the raptor's toe claw-tapped on the ground while its gaze briefly darted between all the people facing it before returning once again to the guy on the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other two men raise their guns a bit higher, taking aim.

"No, wait, don't!" he shouted, stepping forward and drawing the attention of the raptors, causing them to swing their heads around to focus on him.

The raptor in the center — the leader, if Owen had to guess — snarled, baring its teeth as it crouched down into a defensive pose. The other two immediately mimicked its actions, also crouching down.

"Remember, these ones aren't trained," Barry called out softly from behind him. "Careful, Owen."

"I know," he said, taking another cautious step forward. "But they're still raptors."

"Wild ones," Jacobs reminded him.

"Right, but that doesn't mean we should kill them. Let's tranq them," he replied, as he kept his rifle trained on the raptors. "On my sig–"

He was cut off when the middle raptor suddenly lunged forward, landing on the guy on the ground. The guy screamed. The other two raptors didn't hesitate, racing across the clearing. Immediately, shots rang out as everyone took aim and fired.

"Tranqs, use tranqs!" Owen shouted, as he saw one of the raptors let out a piercing shriek as a bullet left a deep gouge in its side.

With everyone moving about, Owen was nervous he was going to end up shooting a person and not a raptor, but almost as quickly as it all started, it ended, as the three raptors finally collapsed to the ground. For a moment, Owen just stood still. He could feel his chest heaving like he'd ran a marathon, adrenaline pumping through his blood, the sound of the guns firing still echoing in his ears, overriding anything else.

Then, as if at the snap of fingers, he could suddenly hear a raptor wheezing and a mix of heavy breathing and groaning around him.

"Everyone okay?" Owen asked, spinning around, looking for the rest of his group.

" _Oui_ ," Barry nodded.

"Yeah," Jacobs added.

"Whoa, don't shoot!" Maynard's reply briefly caught Owen off-guard until he realized Maynard was looking past him.

Spinning back around, Owen saw that the kidnappers (the two that were still standing, that is) were now pointing their guns towards them. He immediately raised his rifle and pointed it back.

"Drop your guns," one of the kidnappers demanded.

"I don't think so," Owen said, shaking his head.

"Bad idea, pal. We're not shooting tranqs like you," the other man replied.

"Yeah, but there's four of us and only two of you. I think the odds are in our favour," Owen simply said. He felt more than saw Jacobs, Maynard and Barry all stepping forward until they were level with him, their guns also raised.

"And we're not _all_ shooting tranqs," Maynard added.

"Do you _really_ think you can shoot us all before we can take you out?" Owen asked again, starting to grow exasperated by the pointless exchange. "Drop _your_ guns." There was a loud groan, and everyone quickly looked towards the source — the third kidnapper who was still on the ground. "Your friend needs help. Drop your guns and we'll provide it."

This time, his comment was accompanied by two high pitched chirps from behind the kidnappers, which caused them both to stumble forward a couple of steps in surprise. Owen had to hide his grin. He had completely forgotten about Grape and Olive, with everything going on. The two baby raptors let out a couple more questioning chitters and Owen could hear them trying to move about in their cages. He was pretty sure they were searching for him, having recognized his voice.

"Why should we believe you?" the first man finally asked, but Owen could tell he was wavering, his gun no longer being held quite so steady.

"We helped Mike and Keith," Owen reminded them. "They're friends of yours, right?"

Another loud groan came from the guy on the ground, but this time it was accompanied by a snort from one of the raptors.

"I don't know how long they're going to be out," Barry interrupted. "And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd prefer to not be here when they wake up."

"Put down your guns," Owen repeated. He watched as the two kidnappers looked towards each other. They had a hushed conversation, before finally they simultaneously lowered their weapons, muzzles pointing down at the ground. Owen wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but he also had the same concerns as Barry and knew that time was of the essence. "Maynard, Jacobs." He directed the two guards to deal with the kidnappers.

While he wanted to go check on Grape and Olive, he forced himself to turn away and instead to check over the three raptors on the ground first. He was relieved when he found tranq darts on all of them, although a bit concerned by the various gashes they were sporting. There were a couple obvious bullet wounds that he could see — but they seemed to be mostly deep grazes that, luckily, didn't appear to be bleeding much anymore. And, on the plus side, all the raptors appeared to be still breathing.

After his quick check (which he'd mostly done to confirm that it was unlikely that one of the raptors was going to just leap up off the ground any time soon), he turned his focus to the injured man. The man was now also bleeding from a laceration across his chest and Owen quickly yanked off his backpack, digging through for all the supplies Claire had shoved in. He was pretty sure he remembered seeing packages of gauze and other bandages.

"He doesn't look good," Barry commented quietly, kneeling down beside Owen.

"Yeah," Owen agreed, ripping open some gauze packages and pressing them down onto the wounds. The guy on the ground immediately groaned, his eyes fluttering, but he didn't come to. "I don't think we can carry him back. We're going to need to figure out something else."

"Can we use their boat?" Barry asked, opening another gauze package and copying Owen's actions.

"Maybe," Owen said thoughtfully, looking over towards it. However, from this new angle, the slightly deflated look he'd noticed early was looking a lot more pronounced. "But they must be having issues with it. Otherwise why haven't they left yet? Looks like it has a tear."

"Usually those things are pretty hard to rip," Barry noted, following Owen's gaze towards the boat briefly, before he glanced around the area. "Do you think maybe one of the raptors?"

"They weren't near the boat. Although…" Owen glanced over at the downed raptors. "I suppose they could've damaged it overnight when the guys were stealing Grape and Olive. It had to have happened a while ago, for them to still be here."

"Yeah," Barry nodded.

"Hey, Owen," Maynard interrupted as he came over to join them, holding out his radio. "Matt wants to talk to you."

Owen looked at the radio and then down to where he was still using both hands to press on the gauze.

"I'll swap with you," Maynard offered, sinking down to his knees and taking Owen's place.

"Matt?" Owen asked, pressing the talk button on the radio.

" _Owen, Maynard was just filling me in,_ " Matt replied. " _Wild raptors, really?_ "

"Yeah, not what we were expecting either," Owen confirmed. "But, we need some help here, Matt. We've got a really injured guy and, with all the noise we've made, plus the unconscious raptors… We can't stay here. We need to get moving, but I don't think we can carry him back."

" _Right, that's what I want–_ " Matt was drowned out by a loud screech sounding from somewhere in the depth of the jungle, and everyone quickly looked around nervously.

"What was that?" one of the kidnappers asked from where he was now sitting (tied up) on the ground.

"Matt, we really gotta move," Owen repeated hurriedly. "I'm pretty sure these raptors were not alone."

" _Right, as I was saying–_ " Matt started before being drowned out again, but this time by a loud rumbling sound coming from down river.

"Is that a boat?" Jacobs asked, moving towards the river and trying to look down it.

Owen also looked towards the river but he couldn't see anything, yet. He turned back to the two kidnappers suddenly even more worried — could they have been waiting for reinforcements?

o-o-o

After they'd heard the scream, Claire watched as Foster sped up their boat. Around the same time, their radio crackled to life and Burke picked it up. Claire hadn't even realized they had a radio with them (although, of course, it made sense that they did).

"What's up?" Burke asked.

Claire couldn't hear the answer, the rumbling of the boat's motor mixed with the sound of the water drowning it out. But, she didn't have to wait long.

"They've lost contact with Grady and the rest," Burke announced, clipping his radio back to his belt.

Immediately Claire felt the blood drain from her face as a zillion worst case scenarios ran through her mind. While she wouldn't put it past Owen to normally shrug off doing consistent check-ins, he had the two ACU guards with him who would stick to it. And not just that, but Owen knew that she was monitoring the check-ins. He wouldn't want her to worry if he could help it.

"What happened?" she asked, turning to face Burke and trying to keep her voice from breaking.

"They don't know. They've only missed one check-in so far, and aren't answering their rad–" Burke's answer was cut off when the jungle suddenly exploded with a second scream that was immediately followed by the sound of gunshots. And not just one or two, but what felt like a barrage of them.

"Take cover!" Foster shouted.

A heavy arm on her back propelled Claire almost face first into the floor of the boat. She lay there as the gunfire continued for another few seconds, before suddenly cutting off.

There was a long moment of silence before Foster asked, "Everyone okay?"

"I'm fine," Burke replied.

"Me, too," Claire added after shakily picking herself up off the floor and sitting back on her seat. "What was that?"

"I think we know why they weren't responding," Foster just replied, his voice grim. "Burke, be prepared."

Claire watched as Burke picked up a rifle and moved to the front of the boat. Suddenly, wanting to go out on the boat and then to go along on the dinghy no longer felt like her best idea. She clenched her hands in her lap, torn between wishing she had a gun and wishing she just wasn't there.

With the canopy of tree branches and foliage still hanging low, it was impossible to actually see ahead and to know what they might encounter before they, well, _encountered it._ The whole thing just made Claire uneasy, and she wondered if anyone would comment if she actually just sat back down on the floor of the boat instead.

It wasn't long though, only a couple of minutes, before Burke spoke up.

"I think I can see a boat ahead," he told them, and Foster throttled down their speed, so they could approach more cautiously.

" _Foster?_ " The voice out of the radio gave Claire such a start that she almost fell off her seat.

"Jacobs?" Foster answered, picking up the radio Burke had handed over when he'd moved to the front.

" _Yeah. We just talked to Matt and he said you're on a boat on the river. I'm guessing that means it's probably you we can hear approaching,_ " Jacobs replied. " _Unless you saw others…_ "

"No, and we can see the edge of what looks like a zodiac beached ahead. That you?"

" _Yep, that's us. Um.. we need some help, so if you could..._ " Jacobs trailed off.

"Coming," Foster said, throttling up the boat again.

Claire just watched nervously from her perch as the zodiac ahead grew closer and closer until suddenly a clearing beside it was also visible. A clearing that looked to be crowded by people and… Claire blinked. Were those _raptors_ on the ground? Her eyes wide and horrified, she immediately searched the area for Owen, relaxing slightly when she realized that she'd missed him on her first pass because he was crouched down next to someone lying on the ground.

Thirty seconds later, Foster had pulled their boat close to shore and Burke scrambled out the front. Jacobs had been waiting for them, and he helped Burke pull the dinghy up until it was resting on the bank.

Now that they were there, and now that Claire could see that _yes,_ those definitely _were_ raptors on the ground, she was left wishing (again) that she'd stayed behind. Of course, no one else seemed particularly nervous about the raptors (although the men did seem to be eyeing the jungle a bit nervously). She initially thought that maybe the raptors were dead, but then she saw the chest rise and fall on at least one of them. However, she knew it wouldn't do to let anyone know that she was nervous, so after a deep breath she smoothed out her expression before quickly scrambling out of the boat after Burke.

"What's going on?" she asked Jacobs. "Where did those raptors come from? They're not ours, right?"

"Not ours," Jacobs confirmed. "Wild ones."

"Really?" Burke asked.

"Really. But, we don't have time to focus on that as we don't know if there are others. And, more importantly, we don't know how long they'll be out. We need to get out of here."

"There's too many of us for our dinghy," Foster commented, joining the group. "I'd suggest we could do a couple of trips, but that won't work if we're in a hurry. Unless we can use their zodiac, then maybe…"

"Can't," Jacobs shook his head. "There's a couple of tears in it, and they're too big for a simple patch job."

"Tears? From what?" Foster asked, surprised.

"We think Grape or Olive managed to snag it with a toe claw," Owen answered, joining their group, coming to a stop beside Claire.

She was a little surprised when he didn't immediately reach for her, until she realized that she could see traces of blood on his hands. She immediately scanned him over, but he didn't appear to be injured. Which meant the blood wasn't his. Swallowing heavily, she had to force herself to not step away.

"Only reason they hadn't gotten away yet was that they were still trying to figure out a solution. And then, well, those showed up." Owen pointed towards the raptors. "In a way, they're lucky that we followed them."

"You okay?" Claire asked, her gaze locked back on the blood she could see. Then, remembering she should be concerned for _all_ of them, she quickly corrected herself. "All of you, I mean. Who's injured?"

"One of the kidnappers," Owen replied. "One of the raptors got him. While we've managed to mostly stop the bleeding — we think — he's probably going to need to be medevaced to San Jose."

"Okay," Claire said, nodding as she quickly tried to come up with a strategy. "The helicopter should be here soon. We could have it come out here and get him."

"No," Owen immediately disagreed. "We don't know what's out here, and we really need to get out of this area. We can't afford to wait for the helicopter. Not only has there been a lot of noise, which may bring out other animals, but there's also blood. It's not safe to wait here."

At Owen's words, Claire's gaze darted about the clearing, focusing on the edges of the jungle that now felt like they were closing in on them. She shivered, fear briefly taking over, as she wondered what could be out there, possibly looking back at her.

Owen didn't seem to have noticed her reaction, as he was focused on the small dinghy they'd arrived in, frowning. "That's not going to be big enough."

"Is anyone else injured?" Foster asked. "We're going to have to divide up. We can take the injured out on the boat, but the rest of you will have to hike back."

"Just the one guy," Owen confirmed. "But we also need to get Grape and Olive back as well."

"If they've already tore up one zodiac I really don't think we want to put them anywhere near ours," Burke quickly interjected.

"Yeah," Owen agreed with a resigned sigh. "I guess we'll just have to carry them. At least they're in cages. And still pretty small, although not all that light." He looked back at the injured guy where Maynard and Barry were still dealing with him. "Let's load the guy up. Faster we do that, the sooner the rest of us can head back."

As the group moved towards the injured man to do just that, Claire was surprised when Owen broke away and instead headed towards one of the wild raptors. She trailed after him, stopping a few feet back when he squatted down.

"What are you doing?" she asked nervously, watching as he reached for the raptor. "Should you be touching it?"

"She's out," Owen said, glancing back at her briefly. "She can't hurt me. I wonder how many more are here. And why we've never seen them before." He looked out at the jungle as he said that, almost as if he expected more to just walk out.

Claire shifted nervously from foot to foot. "You're the one who's always told me how silent and still Blue, Echo and Charlie can be. How they can just disappear into the foliage in their paddocks. If these raptors haven't wanted to be found…"

"Yeah, true," Owen nodded. He reached for his wrist, unclasping his watch before once again reaching towards the raptor. He looped his watch high around the raptors arm.

"You're giving it your watch?" Claire asked, trying to understand the logic. "What for?"

"It's got GPS," Owen replied, standing up and moving back beside her. "I don't know how long it'll stay on, I'm sure they'll try to remove it, but maybe we'll be lucky and can get a better idea of where they normally are on the island." As Owen looked down at the raptor Claire watched as a fond smile spread across his face. "Wild raptors…" He shook his head in disbelief, before turning to look at her, now sporting an excited grin. "Just think of how much we can learn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... only 1 chapter left and it's all wrapped up. Next chapter is sort of a combined wrap up / epilogue. Thanks to everyone's stuck it out this far. See you in a week. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before you start this final chapter, I just need to give a massive shout out to **[Nadin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadin/pseuds/nadin)** who has been with me every single step through all three stories in this trilogy from the original kernel of an idea to completion. She's also the one you all need to thank for this third story even happening — it only exists because she planted an idea in my head that refused to go away.

**Chapter 9**

Owen had never been so happy to see the perimeter fence. Normally, he abhorred the sight of it, since it so often felt oppressive, but now he couldn't wait to be back on the other side of it. The walk back had been a lot _less_ fun than the walk out. Not that it had been _fun_ earlier, but at least at that time they hadn't had any confirmation that there really _were_ wild dinosaurs still on the island (and raptors, to boot).

If the knowledge of the wild raptors wasn't bad enough, he'd been tasked with carrying Grape back. He'd wanted to protest, to make someone else do it, but there really wasn't anyone else who could carry her.

Grape and Olive had been placed in separate cages, which ended up being a good thing, considering they were actually pretty heavy, clocking in at over 35 pounds each. Of the 6 of them who were stuck walking back, two were the kidnappers, and _no one_ trusted them with either rifles _or_ the raptors (especially not _now_ , when they had no reason to try to keep the raptors safe). And considering that Maynard and Jacobs were ACU, it had made the most sense that they would be the ones who would continue to be essentially "on guard," tasked with protecting everyone for the journey back (and keeping the kidnappers in line). That had left only Barry and Owen to carry the raptors.

So for over 40 minutes now, Owen had been lugging along Grape, who had _not_ been enjoying the ride, if her continuous squawking was any indication. Mind you, Owen hadn't enjoyed a single moment of it either. As relieved as he was to have found the two baby raptors, hauling one in a cage that was continually banging into his leg, while trying to convince the raptor within to _stay quiet_ , while also being alert for any unusual sounds that could indicate an approaching animal was not his idea of a good time. Made worse by the fact that he could only really use one arm. He'd tried – very briefly — to use his left arm, but the immediate pull he'd felt in his shoulder from his old injury had let him know that wasn't a good idea. Not yet, anyway.

His only consolation (and it was a very small one), was that he'd heard Barry angrily muttering to himself and Olive on the walk back, and so he knew he wasn't the only one not enjoying this.

Matt, a couple of other guards, and Zia were all waiting for them at the gate and were quick to usher them through.

They were also met by Blue, Echo, and Charlie, who had been standing at the back of their paddock before Owen and the others had even emerged from the jungle. At the sight of them, Owen quickly hurried everyone through the gate.

The two sets of raptors had never interacted before, and Owen wasn't keen on _now_ being the first time that they really did. Owen and Barry both tried to keep the baby raptors hidden as much as possible (although their continual squawking from their cages had definitely caught the attention of the others, who were chittering in response).

Once they'd moved far enough away from the prying eyes of the older raptors, Owen set Grape's cage down and started to scan the area, his brow furrowing. Where was Claire? Surely she should've beat them back, what with the boat.

"She's on a call with Masrani and some others," Zia informed him as though reading his mind, as she squatted down to look into the cage at Grape.

"Huh?" Owen asked, having not quite caught her remarks as he'd been too busy still looking around.

"Claire. She's on a call," Zia repeated. "What's wrong with Grape?"

"Nothing's wrong," Owen said, looking down at the raptor who was gripping the side of her small cage and snarling at Zia. "She's just mad about being stuck in there. She didn't like being carried. I'm also not sure if she's been fed recently."

"Well, let's get her and Olive back to their room and get them some food and water," Zia replied, standing back up. "I'll give them a more thorough check up later, once they're calm."

"Sure," Owen nodded. He glared at the cage momentarily before picking it back up. Grape immediately lurched from one side of the cage to another causing it to tilt wildly. She let out a shriek at that, and Owen had to bite back a growl. "Stop it," he told the raptor. "You know this goes better if you stay still. I'll let you out in a couple of minutes."

He looked over at Barry and noticed that Barry had already picked Olive back up. Olive seemed to be tolerating the experience _slightly_ better than Grape. Or maybe she was just more resigned to her fate. Owen wasn't quite sure.

The three of them quickly carried the raptors across the yard and into the nursery. When they entered, Zia pulled away to go check on the compys while Owen and Barry headed for the raptors' room at the back. After placing the two cages inside their area, Owen hesitated, his hand on the latch. He looked down at Grape who was staring back at him, her lips curled in a snarl.

"On second thought, I think I better put on the gauntlet and get some food before I let them out," Owen said, standing back up, again glaring down at the raptor. "Grape looks pissed off enough to attack."

"Good call," Barry agreed. "I doubt Claire would be impressed if–"

When Barry cut off, Owen looked over at his friend, who was nervously staring out of the cage towards the door. Following his gaze, Owen wasn't all that surprised to see Claire standing there.

"Wouldn't be impressed if what happened?" Claire asked, stepping closer to the chain link fence.

"Nothing. Barry and I were just talking about grabbing them some food before we let them out," Owen filled in smoothly, after exchanging a quick panicked look with Barry.

"Right," Claire replied, drawing out the word as she looked between the two guys a few times, before focusing through the fence on the baby raptors. "I hope you were planning on using some protective gear. They don't look all that happy." She returned her gaze to Owen's, an eyebrow arched meaningfully. "We don't need any more bloodshed today, 'accidental' or not."

Barry snickered, before quickly trying to cover it with a cough, while Owen just put on his most charming smile.

"Wouldn't think of it," Owen said, before looking past her towards the door for a second. "Was just going to get it now."

As he exited the cage, he wasn't surprised when Claire followed him out of the room and down the hallway to the supply room. The moment they entered it, she grabbed at his shirt, surprising him as she pulled him down to her, her arms winding around his neck as she kissed him. He didn't hesitate, wrapping his own arms around her and pulling her into him.

"Are you really okay?" Claire asked, when the need to breathe finally caused them to separate. She pushed him away slightly, her gaze travelling up and down his body.

"Perfectly fine," he reassured her. "Are _you_?"

"Me?" She looked confused at his question, and he reached out and gently pulled the neck of her shirt down slightly.

"You look a little burnt," he said, trailing his finger along her skin.

"Not enough sunscreen," she replied with a grimace. "But, I'll be fine."

"Are you heading back today?" Owen asked. "Actually, wait, what happened to the injured guy? Where's the helicopter? Is it here and you need to go?"

"It's here," Claire nodded. "But the plan is for it to take the three guys straight to San Jose."

"Oh." Owen wasn't really sure what to make of that.

"I think Maynard and Jacobs are being tasked to go with them. The cops will be waiting for them there. They've already picked up Mike and are keeping an eye on Keith."

"Really?" Owen wasn't sure why that surprised him, but it did. Claire really was efficient. "You've already arranged all of that?"

"Yes. Well, me, and Simon, and Zara," she replied.

"So when do you leave?" He still had his arms wrapped around her, resting low on her back, holding her in a loose hug, and he pulled her a bit closer as he asked. Owen knew Claire would be eager to get back to Nublar, but he wasn't quite ready to part with her, not just yet.

"Probably not until this evening," Claire said, a brief scowl crossing her face. "The helicopter needs to bring Maynard and Jacobs back here, and with the guy's injuries, they want to get him to San Jose as soon as possible, so there's no time to stop off at Nublar to drop me off on the way." She glanced at her watch. "Actually, they're probably leaving now. So I'm stuck here for a while longer."

"You don't have to look so happy about it," he teased her, dropping a quick kiss on her lips when she scowled again. "I'm happy to have you here for a bit longer."

"Are Grape and Olive okay?" she asked, and at her words Owen remembered what he'd originally set out to do.

"Yeah. They just really don't like being stuck in those small cages. They've never had to deal with them before," he told her as he reluctantly pulled away. He found the leather gauntlet and strapped it on before searching the fridge for their meals. He pulled out a couple of bowls before kicking the door closed behind him and then heading out of the storage room as Claire followed. "I don't think they've been fed. So I think they're also hungry."

"Hm," Claire said, walking beside him back to the room. "That's good. That they're okay, I mean. Not that they're hungry."

As they entered the raptor's room, Barry clearly had been waiting for them. He was crouched down at the cages and at their entry, he said, none too quietly, "See, told you Owen hadn't forgotten."

"Yeah, yeah." Owen rolled his eyes at his friend, before gesturing with Barry to switch places.

Once Barry was standing on the other side of the fence with Claire, Owen placed the two bowls of food on a shelf that was out of the raptors reach, before reaching down to the cages. He decided to let Olive out first, since she'd been a bit better behaved and he wanted to make a point. Olive quickly scampered out of her cage, letting out a squawk as she looked up towards the shelf.

"You hungry, Olive?" Owen asked, reaching for one of the bowls and then moving to the far wall of the paddock as Olive trailed after him, chittering away. "Here you go." He placed the bowl on the ground and grinned as Olive practically attacked it.

Turning back to Grape, who was now kicking up a fuss in her cage, he walked back to her. "Calm down, Grape, I've got a bowl for you, too. But you need to quiet down first." Grape snarled at him. "Hey! Stop that. I'm not going to let you out if you're just going to attack me."

He held her gaze, and Grape continued to bare her teeth for another long moment, before finally conceding defeat and letting out a hopeful whine instead. He made her wait another few seconds before he opened her cage, at last, and let her out. For a moment, she looked like she was going to lunge at him, but instead she turned and headed straight towards Olive and her bowl of food.

"Whoa, no, no, no!" Owen grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back. "That's Olive's. I've got a bowl for you. You know that. Leave your sister alone." She continued to fight against his hold briefly, but Owen held on, keeping her in place until she again caved. When he let her go, he reached quickly for her bowl of food, and took it to the other side of the area, away from Olive. "Here you go."

He watched her eat for a second, before using the time that they were distracted to grab the now empty cages and slip out of the door in the fence to rejoin Barry and Claire.

"They really are so adorable, aren't they?" Claire said, still watching the raptors. "People are going to love them."

Owen grimaced at that, but he couldn't disagree. At least, not while they were babies. "They're less adorable once they're fully grown."

"Yeah, but then they've got their scariness going for them," Claire pointed out, but she was grinning at him, and he knew she meant it mostly jokingly. He didn't need to express how he felt about them becoming an attraction, she knew. It was just an area they had agreed to disagree on.

Before Owen could respond, the door behind Claire opened as Zia entered.

"How're they doing?" Zia asked, her gaze honing in on the raptors.

"Looking good," Owen said. "I think we're lucky. I think the guys got so caught up in trying to figure out how to deal with their boat that they just left them alone. Could've been a lot worse."

"That's for sure," Zia agreed. "I still want to give them a check over."

"Now?" Barry asked.

"No, let's give them a bit more time first," Zia said. "I'll come back in maybe an hour."

"Sounds good." Owen nodded. He looked back at Grape and Olive for a moment before looking over at Barry. "I don't know about you, but I could really use some food, too."

" _D'accord_ ," Barry agreed.

After Owen dropped off the gauntlet and empty cages in the storage room, the four of them headed out of the nursery and towards the cafeteria. As they walked, Owen looked across the grass towards the perimeter fence, before letting out a sigh and shaking his head.

"What?" Claire asked, slipping her hand into his.

"Just thinking about how we're _never_ going to be allowed to leave the perimeter now."

o-o-o

As Claire walked across the park with Simon on their way to the Research Institute she realized that she felt completely relaxed with him. Today, for the first time since she went to the Lockwood Estate all those months ago, he hadn't made a single comment about that trip. No concerned looks or prying questions. Not even one about Owen.

Instead, it felt like they were finally back to where they had been before, where they focused on the neverending list of topics that they needed to talk about. Back where she could feel confident and comfortable in her job, sure that she was where she should be.

"I know I shouldn't be, but I'm still surprised at the lengths that those guys went to, to try to steal the raptors," Simon said, shaking his head.

They'd been talking about this for most of their walk so far, as Simon continued to express his bewilderment.

"Five guys. They sent five guys," Simon continued, incredulous.

"That doesn't concern me as much as the fact that they almost got away with it," Claire said back. "And we _helped_. If we hadn't offered assistance to Keith, they never would've been able to get into the camp, and never would've got to Olive and Grape."

"Maybe," Simon said. "But, I bet they would've been back. Come up with a solution. Short out the fence or come at us from the water instead. Like the last time."

"True," she agreed.

"But, they'll be locked up for a long time now," Simon said. "Last time I checked it sounds like they might even be able to add attempted murder to their charges."

"Attempted–What? Really?" Claire looked at him in surprise. "But they didn't harm the raptors. Well, I guess the _wild_ raptors, sort of. But they seem to be fine."

"The statements from the guards say they pointed their guns at them," Simon replied. "Lawyers are debating if it's worth adding to the rest of their charges. Might not be, they've probably already got enough of a case with everything else."

Claire almost stopped walking at his words. Owen and the others had had a gun pointed at them? How come Owen had never told her? Had something else happened? She didn't have much time to contemplate it though as Simon continued on.

"There have been some good things out of all of this," he said, briskly walking up the steps towards the Research Institute and Claire quickly hurried after him. He held the door open and waved Claire in. "Ben has been very interested in what else he can do to help here."

"It's not his fault," she quickly countered. "He shouldn't be feeling guilty about those guys."

If there was one person that Claire actually felt bad for in all the fallout, it was Lockwood. When the kidnappers had finally started to crack under the pressure of questioning, a few of them had decided it was better to sell out those who'd hired them given the long prison sentences they were facing — Eli Mills was one of the first names they had shared. No, they weren't working _for_ him (he was currently locked up still awaiting his own trial). But the guy who _had_ hired them — Gregor Aldrich, a Slovenian arms dealer — had done so because Eli had already sold him the raptors. Aldrich had been eager to try to reclaim what he saw as his rightful property.

If Claire hadn't stumbled into everything back at the Estate, Olive and Grape would currently be the property of Aldrich. She didn't like to think about what their lives would be like.

It hadn't even been a week since the kidnapping yet, and more and more information was still coming to light everyday. Claire was no longer quite sure if she was looking forward to the updates or dreading them.

"Ben's very interested in the wild raptors," Simon added as they walked across the lobby and headed for the elevator. "He's thrilled about all the research opportunities they present, and is already talking about additional funding."

"Owen hasn't stopped talking about them, either," Claire admitted. "You'd think he'd have his hands full with his girls and Olive and Grape, but… He's just fascinated by what they'll be able to learn."

"He's a scientist, at heart," Simon said, nodding knowingly.

"He really is," Claire agreed, letting out a small chuckle.

She knew that Owen didn't really have anything against the word scientists, but he would always sort of shudder when she called him that, saying that was for the 'lab geeks' and not people like him. He just didn't want to admit that his own interests were actually quite in line with those 'lab geeks.'

As they stepped out of the elevator and headed for the conference room, Claire could see Tom, Frank, and Helen already seated inside with a few others, awaiting them.

Turning to Simon, she gave a final comment before they entered the room: "Between the wild raptors, the Edmontosaurus project, and Olive and Grape, I think we're about to have our most profitable year ever."

o-o-o

As Owen closed the cage door, leaving Grape and Olive behind, he focused his attention back on Parker who had been silent as he'd watched Owen's training session.

"So," Owen said, opening the door out of the raptors room. "I know you're not really here to see Grape and Olive. Or, at least, not solely to see them."

"You're right, I'm not," Parker agreed as he followed Owen down the short hallway to the storage room.

Owen quickly divested himself of the bucket he'd been carrying and his protective gear before returning to Parker's side and the two walked out of the building. Stepping outside, Owen paused, looking to the left and right, not sure where to go.

"How about we go to your office," Parker suggested, as if sensing Owen's hesitation.

Owen just nodded, before leading them in that direction. He had known from the moment that Parker had announced yesterday that he was coming over, that it was going to be about the job offer. Not that Parker had specified that (he hadn't), but with all the excitement over the discovery of the wild raptors, and with no one really knowing who to turn to as to what to do next, Owen had been expecting that Parker was going to be in a hurry to fulfill that role.

Entering his office, Owen sat down behind his desk as Parker took the "guest" chair in the room. The guest chair was actually Hoskins' old office chair, but since he was no longer on the island and no one was using that office at the moment, Barry and Owen had co-opted it as their own. Considering Zia often came and hung out with them, it was nice to now have a third chair in their room.

"So," Owen repeated, not really wanting to be the one to bring it up first.

Parker's response, however, wasn't what he was expecting.

"Wild raptors," Parker said, shaking his head with almost disbelief as he leaned back in his chair. "Over a year on this island, a field test, everything that's happened, and it's only now that we find them." There was a brief pause, before Parker continued. "I see you got your watch back."

"I'm surprised it worked," Owen admitted, glazing at said watch now strapped to his wrist. "I was pretty sure they'd manage to get it off before we could track them down. And while we have tagged those ones now, I'm still wondering how many others are out there that we don't know about. Raptors or otherwise."

"You think there might be other species here?" Parker asked, sitting up and leaning forward.

"Possibly," Owen said. "Probably not any of the bigger herbivores. I'm not expecting we're going to come across an Apatosaurus. And probably none of the ones that are usually out in the meadows, like the Gallimimus. I think we'd have seen those. But, the smaller species that stay more under cover? It's possible. The compys are really small, so they're a likely one. Although… I think our camp would be too enticing to a compy and we would've seen them before now, if they were still here. While Sorna's bigger than Nublar, without any extra food supply being brought in, there's only so much that would be able to sustain itself."

"That makes sense," Parker agreed. He shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter, and Owen immediately got nervous. "With this discovery, as you can probably imagine, the role we've talked about has changed. The Research Institute is fascinated by the wild raptors and is eager to study them. Between IBRIS, these wild raptors, the lab work that's happening here, the dinosaurs in the nursery… We're talking about expanding our presence on the island. Building it up even more."

"Hm," Owen said, nodding along.

While he had already decided what his answer was going to be if Parker asked him to take the job again, he hadn't even thought of all the extra stuff that might start happening. Not that any of it changed his mind — it was just reinforcing his earlier decision.

"We're still looking to hire someone to manage the island as a whole, but it's become an even bigger position than we thought. We've narrowed it down to a few candidates." Parker looked at Owen, almost apologetically. "Because of the seniority this role is now going to require, we're looking for someone who has more management experience."

"So not me," Owen confirmed, and Parker nodded. "That makes sense," Owen continued. "Actually, to be honest, I was planning to turn you down. I like working with my girls too much. And I want to be able to keep doing so. And with Grape and Olive. And while I know Grape and Olive will eventually be transferred to Nublar, and that that'll free up my schedule more, I'm really interested in the wild raptors. The potential for what we can learn from them — what _I_ can learn from them — is just huge. And then using that knowledge with the girls…" He trailed off, knowing he was getting a bit carried away.

"I do have a counter proposal, actually," Parker said. "At the moment, you're our leading expert on the raptors. And while I know that the people from the Research Institute are chomping at the bit, none of them have worked with or around any of the raptors before, much less wild ones. I'd like to make you the lead on that project."

Owen opened his mouth ready to interject, his thoughts flying. Hadn't Parker heard him just say that he wanted to keep working with his girls? And now he was wanting to put him on something completely different (although, yes, at least it was still focused on raptors)?

Parker held up his hand before Owen could say anything. "Before you turn me down, hear me out. You'd still be based here on Sorna and the plan would be that your primary responsibilities would remain with IBRIS, first and foremost. We don't want to derail that project. More, the idea is that this would be an additional role that you would take on. You would work with those from the Research Institute on deciding what and how to research these new raptors. You wouldn't be doing any of the direct research yourself. At least, not at first. Maybe once the two raptors are moved to Nublar."

"Huh," Owen said, leaning back in his chair, his thoughts swirling.

Ever since he'd first laid eyes on the wild raptors (okay, after they'd been knocked out and he'd had a moment fully comprehend that there _were_ wild raptors on Sorna), he'd been eager to start learning all he could about them. But, he'd also known that it wouldn't be up to him, and Claire had mentioned that she was pretty sure the task was going to be handed off to the Research Institute. And then she'd mentioned that if he wanted to be involved, taking the job Parker had brought up might be his best bet (which had _almost_ swayed him to consider accepting it). And yet, here Parker was, essentially offering him the best of all possibilities — he could continue to work with his girls and _also_ be involved in the work with the wild raptors. And even better, he could do all of that _without_ having to manage everyone and everything else on Sorna.

"Wow," he said, "I really wasn't expecting this."

"So, are you interested?" Parker asked, a knowing grin on his face.

Owen was unable to contain his own grin. "Absolutely."

o-o-o

"Did you have a good meeting at the Institute today?" Claire asked Owen when there was a lull in their conversation. She'd been trying to hold off asking, thinking he'd bring it up on his own all evening, but so far, he hadn't.

In fact, when she'd texted him as her work day was finally winding down, he'd only replied that he was out sitting on the dock, and did she want to come join him, or should he head back to their condo. After a short back and forth, it was decided that she'd pick up something for dinner and bring it out there.

She'd been a little concerned as to what his mood would be like as she'd driven out. She knew he often retreated to the dock when he was thinking something over. But he'd seemed to be in good spirits when she got there. The picnic table had been set and he'd greeted her with a kiss before handing over a beer.

The first half of their meal had been mostly her re-hashing her day. And she wasn't complaining about that. It was nice to be able to do something so mundane face-to-face instead of over a phone call. She really enjoyed these moments they had together, no matter how small.

But, she was also _really_ curious as to his meeting. The next few days were the official kickoff of the wild raptors project and today Owen had finally got to meet the team from the Research Institute face-to-face.

"Yeah," Owen nodded, before falling silent again.

Claire decided to wait him out, taking another bite of her dinner while she watched him.

"They all seem really excited," he finally added. "Eager to get started. I'm still not sure how many or who will end up coming over to Sorna, but I think we may want to permanently move a few over. Of course, we don't really have space for that, not yet."

"I've seen some plans going around for an expansion," Claire said. "More buildings, bigger area, et cetera."

"Yeah, Parker's mentioned some of that," Owen nodded. "But that'll all take time."

"What does that mean for now? If you can't have any of them over there?" she asked.

"Not a whole lot," he shrugged. "Until we have a plan, we don't want to do much to spook the raptors. As it is, they've had their whole world interrupted recently. We don't know how close they've come to our camp before. I'm sure it can't be _too_ close, otherwise I think we'd have caught them on camera. But they've now had the interaction with the kidnappers when we knocked them out. And then again when we implanted the trackers. For now, our plan is to just let them be while we sort out exactly _what_ we want to do."

"You're just going to … leave them?" Claire definitely hadn't expected that as an answer. Not with how giddy Owen had seemed over the discovery of the raptors. And not just him — _everyone_ had seemed over the top excited.

"We're tracking their movements," he reminded her. "But we want them to stay wild. So we need to maintain as much distance as we can. How and what we'll do is the first task for the team to work on."

"Huh," she said, putting down her fork as she chewed slowly on her final bite, before taking a sip of her beer to wash it all down. "I guess that makes sense."

"There's a bunch of different interests across the team," Owen continued, starting to warm up to the subject. "Like, one person was talking about learning more about their diets. And another about how they hunt. Personally, I'm mostly interested in contrasting the behaviours we discover with those we see in Blue and the others. How similar _are_ the girls to the wild ones? How domesticated have we made them? Do they hunt the same? I have so many questions." He paused to take a swig of his beer, before placing the now empty bottle down and looking over at her sheepishly. "Sorry. I could talk about this all day."

"It's really nice to see you so excited about it," Claire admitted. "Seems like a much better fit than the original job Parker proposed."

"It really is," Owen agreed. "Even more so now, what with how they expanded that role out. Actually, Parker said they've finally hired someone. I think they start maybe next week?"

"Yeah, I heard that, too," she nodded. "Kathy Wright."

"You know her?"

"No," Claire said. "Just copied on some emails about the hire. Her resume looks impressive."

"I hope she'll mostly leave us alone," Owen grumbled, before brightening a bit. "Actually, I've been talking to Parker about what the organizational structure will look like. It doesn't make sense to me that whoever manages Sorna directly manages any of the raptor projects, not any of the smaller details like how we research and so on. And he agrees. We're not quite sure what the final structure will be, but he also agreed that the setup over the last few months has been working well. So I'm hopeful I won't really need to interact with her too much."

"Is he thinking of making you head of raptor research or something?" she asked. "Wouldn't that be more paperwork? I thought you were trying to avoid that."

"Definitely not keen on more paperwork," he said with a grimace. "But, not being micromanaged may make it worthwhile. Who knows what will happen. But he knows that I want to continue to work directly with the raptors like I do now. I'm not ready to move on from that. Not yet."

Claire tried to push aside the sudden twisting in her stomach she had over his words. If Owen was going to be taking on all of this extra work, and continuing to work with his girls, well, that didn't seem promising that he'd be able to keep coming back to Nublar regularly. She knew his schedule was already quite full.

The worst part was that if he wasn't going to be able to come back regularly, well, what did that mean for their planned vacation that was only a couple of weeks away now? Was he about to tell her that he needed to cancel? That he couldn't get away? Is that why he hadn't seemed to want to talk about his day?

"But, none of this matters tonight," Owen said, interrupting her thoughts as he stood up, picking up their plates from the table. Claire followed his lead, gathering the few other items before following him into the trailer.

It didn't take long to clean up from their dinner, before they headed back outside, making a beeline for the hammock.

"The hammocks arrived the other day on Sorna," Owen commented once they were settled. "But, I have to say, it's really not the same."

"Not as nice a view?" Claire asked, her gaze drifting to the sun setting over the lake.

"That, yeah. But more I'm not used to being in one alone anymore," he admitted.

She couldn't help but stretch up to kiss him at the comment, before snuggling back into his side. They lay there for a few minutes in silence, before Owen spoke up again.

"So, I was thinking about our vacation," he started, and Claire tried very hard not to tense at his words. "I know things are probably going to get busier with everything happening, so I talked with Barry and Parker to see if I could take a few more days. If you can swing it, I thought maybe we could stretch out our trip. Maybe even go somewhere else, if you want, since we'd have more time."

She didn't respond right away, too stunned by his words. Claire almost couldn't believe what she'd heard.

"Does that not work?" he asked when she didn't reply. "I mean, we don't have to. And if you can't take the time, that's fine. I just–"

He was cut off from whatever he was about to say, as Claire finally managed to pull herself together. She surged upwards to kiss him, the hammock swaying wildly as she did that.

When she finally pulled back, her eyes meeting his, she could feel the grin almost splitting her face in two. "Absolutely. I'm sure I can sort out my schedule. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?"

"Do?" Owen latched on to the second question, ignoring the first one, his hands sliding down her sides to grip her hips. "Well…" he arched an eyebrow suggestively, before stretching up to kiss her as he pulled her over him.

"Besides that," Claire laughed, pulling back slightly. He was undeterred though, his lips simply moving to trail along her jaw. "Owen." She tried to whine, but his name came out on a moan. She pushed against his shoulders lightly, finally getting his attention. "How about we move this inside?"

"You don't want to attempt it out here again?" he asked, but he was already sitting up.

"Another time," she replied as she climbed out of the hammock, walking backwards towards the trailer. He quickly followed, catching her as he slid his hands around her waist, pulling her to him so he could kiss her again.

The two stumbled across the yard for a bit, before Claire, laughing, pulled back, twisting in his grasp so she could see where she was going. Owen simply shifted his grip and pressed his lips to the sensitive spot behind her ear.

As she pulled the trailer door open, Owen finally paused, pulling back ever so slightly.

"Oh, that reminds me, I've been meaning to ask you…"

"Ask me what?" she asked, turning back to him, surprised by the interruption.

"When you stayed on Sorna, why'd you refuse to sleep on the right side?"

" _That's_ what you want to ask me?" Claire said. "Really? You're going to stop what we're doing to ask _that?"_

"Okay, now I _know_ you're deflecting," he replied, his eyes narrowing. "I mean, I knew you were on Sorna. Why won't you tell me?"

Claire couldn't help the flush of embarrassment. She had really hoped he was going to forget about it.

"You let me sleep on the left last night," Owen said. "So it has to be something about Sorna, specifically."

"Sort of," she finally admitted, and he just looked at her quizzically. She sighed and looked over his shoulder out across the lot, not wanting to see his reaction as she said, "I didn't want to be by the window."

"The window? You don't like sleeping by windows?" He looked confused. "But you sleep by the window in the condo."

"I was scared," she finally admitted. "The raptors had got out before. And now there we're unknown people on the island and we didn't know what was going on… I just didn't want to be by the window."

"Oh, I see. You didn't feel safe, but you were willing to sacrifice me," Owen replied, and her gaze snapped back to his.

"Not _sacrifice_ ," she protested, before she caught the twinkle of humour dancing in his eyes. She shoved lightly at his shoulder.

His tone became serious, his gaze locking on hers. "You know I'd protect you, right? That I would never let anything happen to you."

"I know," she said. "But I really don't want you to get hurt either. I think we've had more than enough of that to last us the rest of our lives."

"Hey, no one got hurt this time," Owen reminded her, reaching out and brushing some of her hair back behind her ear. He seemed to sense that she was about to correct him, and he quickly added. "Well, except for the kidnappers, but they don't count."

"Let's just try to keep it that way," she said. "You already work with five dangerous raptors. And you're about to start working with a bunch more. I don't think we need to be tempting fate."

"Hey, I'm always careful," he argued. When she arched an eyebrow in disbelief, he countered by kissing her and nudging her backwards until she entered the trailer.

Claire knew he was distracting her. She knew it, but she really didn't care. After all, they didn't need to talk about this now. There was always tomorrow.

Tonight, she was going to live in the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's a wrap. Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck around for this story. And a **huge** thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment. It means so much.
> 
> I know normally I have some new story or something else to announce, but this time, I don't. :( I've pretty much lost all my motivation to write at the moment. It's frustrating, because I had even mapped out a whole new story (and still have a bunch of snapshot ideas). But depression just really sucks.
> 
> In the meantime, we posted another chapter of [The Missing Years](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401844/chapters/64439677#workskin) over the weekend (why aren't you reading it???) and there's still one more chapter left there for Act III. And then we'll be moving onto the final act.
> 
> I'm going to focus on any writing energy I can muster up on finishing that fic first and foremost. But... I never say never to writing more stuff. So... stay tuned. Hopefully. :)


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